


The Dread Wolf's Heart AU

by Feynite



Series: The Dread Wolf's Heart [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, dubcon, fanfic of a fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:37:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In all of its gratuitous, ridiculous glory - The One Where Solas Eats the Gods and Goes Nuts and Lavellan Winds up as His Persephone, Basically</p>
<p>(Warnings for sex, trippy bullshit, some possible consent issues tied in with Solas having like a baker’s dozen souls in him, angst, Solas being creepy, potential for continuation, my attempts at writing erotica, etc.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an AU fic that branches off from the point in The Dread Wolf's Heart where Lavellan is trying to figure out how the heck she can save Solas from his own massive screw-up. Since TDWH was written before Trespasser, it's not Trespasser compliant. I have been assured by several people that it's possible to enjoy this story without reading TDWH, though; but it will probably make more sense if you're familiar with that fic.

Footsteps, in Josephine’s office.

In a split second, she weighed her options, and then tucked the orb under one arm and climbed out through the massive hole in the wall.

The wind whipped past her head as she made her way onto the ledge.

It was wider than some of the mountain passes had been, actually.

She crept along until she reached a part of the wall that had collapsed enough for her to scale it, and then she scrambled onto the top, eyes peeled for any signs of movement as she tried to think of where she could go. Her plan had, unfortunately, not quite evolved beyond ‘keep the orb away from Solas’. She supposed that if she could get out of Skyhold without him catching her first, there was a chance she could lose him in the mountains.

That train of thought died before it even had a chance to start forming into a coherent plan, though, when something large and black whapped into her side, knocking her from her perch and straight towards the hold’s gardens.

She braced for impact, but didn’t fall nearly as far as she should have before she landed; her back hitting something warm and only a little hard, and distinctly dragon-ish.

A glance down confirmed that she was lying on Solas’ head, just shy of his horns.

“Well. Shit,” she said.

He leaned forward and she rolled onto the ground, clutching the orb as the shadows reformed him into his regular shape.

Swiftly, she got back onto her feet.

They regarded one another from either sides of the dead, neglected space.

After a beat, Solas extended his hand.

Nothing happened.

He stared at the orb, frowned, and then looked at her.

“It is mine, vhenan,” he said.

“Will it not answer you?” she asked.

Slowly, he lowered his arm. He stared at her a moment, and then closed his eyes.

“Solas. Think about this,” she beseeched. “Really think about it. When I woke you, you wanted to give the others a chance. You wanted to save them. You know their faults better than anyone, you suffered for them, but you still believed that they deserved a chance. Those were your thoughts, and your thoughts alone. Why would you want their power?”

The muscle in his jaw clenched. When he opened his eyes again, they were wet.

“Because I understand, now,” he said, his words soft and pained. “It is all dying, vhenan. They will not save it. They will trample everything. Before I had no choice but to hope. But now, there is another path. I need not risk misplaced faith in them, or leave it all to their whims. I can do it myself.”

He took a step forward.

She took a step back.

“Vhenan,” he beseeched, and it felt like her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest and cross the distance between them. She shook her head, and gripped the orb so tightly her fingers hurt.

“You can’t ask me for this,” she told him.

The pained expression on his face magnified tenfold.

“If I do not ask, then I will have to take,” he said.

She sucked in a shaky breath.

“If that’s how it is. Don’t think I’ll make it easy,” she declared, as she thrust her marked hand outwards, and opened a rift directly at his feet.

He fell through, more surprised than anything, and she closed it behind him and stood, for a moment, shocked into silence at her own actions. Then she placed the orb carefully on the ground, and lifted up Sandal’s rune, and activated it.

Solas was standing more or less where she’d left him, somewhat faded and ghost-like as she could see the ‘real’ garden behind him. The garden in the Fade was brighter, and in bloom, surrounded by wisps and butterflies, as it had been when she’d first found Fen’Harel sleeping in his tower.

“Do you mean to strand me in the Fade?” he wondered.

“You know I wouldn’t,” she replied.

“Curious, then. What is your plan?” he asked.

“It’s simple. You put Dumat back into the Fade, and I let you out,” she explained.

“Then we are at an impasse. I need his power, so clearly, I cannot meet your demands. But you love me, so it is unlikely you will simply leave me here to rot,” he mused. “The obvious answer is that it will become a game of patience and willpower. Unfortunately for you, there is an aspect to this dynamic which you have overlooked.”

“Which is?” she wondered.

“The Veil is thin here,” he replied, and the next thing she knew there was a wall of air, slamming her to one side, and he was striding forward and reaching for the orb.

The orb which wasn’t in the Fade – but which, at his touch, nevertheless began to move. Slowly. As if it was very heavy, and required significant effort on his part to accomplish.

She drew her bow.

“Stop,” she commanded.

“You will not shoot me,” he replied.

He has a point, she thought, staring at his face.

Then she shot him in the thigh.

“Ir abelas,” she said as he staggered, then she dashed forward, reaching for the orb.

Solas hissed in pain and another wall of air slammed into her – that one meaner than the last. She hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, and again he reached for the orb. He was grimacing as he did so, silent and intent.

With a scowl of her own, she deactivated Sandal’s rune, blinked, and then strode over to snatch the orb away from him without the interference of the Fade. The air tingled and something definitely fought against her as she held it, and wrenched it backwards until she felt the anchor surge, and the orb pulsed, and for one terrifying second it felt like everything was being torn at.

Then she gasped in a ragged breath, and ran.

It felt like an army of ghosts were chasing her.

Piles of rubble burst into dust and moldy tapestries flew from the walls and bits of debris smacked against her as she ran for the main hall, and then pelted into a broken bench that had been sent flying. The air felt hot and cold by turns.

And then the sounds started to change.

White hot fury burned in her chest, and she stopped where she was, right in the middle of the hall.

With a flick of her wrist, she activated Sandal’s rune, and drew one of her daggers.

“Don’t you dare!” she snarled, moving almost without thought, and an instant later Solas’ face was in front of her; and the edge of her gleaming Fade dagger was at his throat.

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Then his gaze softened, and he reached up, and curled his hand over her own.

“What will you do?” he asked. “My poor heart. You cannot win.”

He was right. That was the worst of it. She couldn’t abandon him in the Fade, and she couldn’t hurt him, and she couldn’t dissuade him.

“Please,” she asked.

But it was the glen in Crestwood again, she knew, even before she spoke. There were no right words she could say. He knew what she wanted, he knew how she felt, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t sway him.

She lowered her dagger.

After a moment, she opened another rift.

He stepped through it, calmly, walking from the Fade.

“Ma serannas,” he breathed, moving close, his lips a whisper at her temple as he took the orb from her defeated hands.

Another whispered word, and the world went dark and quiet as he sent her gently tumbling into unconsciousness.

She didn’t fight it.

She dreamed of a bright thing, crying out in sorrow and pain, and then going silent.

She dreamed of dark doorways thrown wide.

She woke, in her bed in Skyhold, and for a moment she wondered if  _all_  of it had been a dream.

But the sheets were wrong, and the walls, though repaired, were wrong. Painted murals spread around her, covering every brick and stone. She sat up and stared at them. A green figure and a wolf passed through scenes of floating castles, and dark wilderness, and chained cities. They fought dragons and demons, and chased a gleaming orb.

At the end of the stretch, the wolf became a dragon, and gripped the orb tight in its jaws.

The green figure became an elven woman, arms reaching towards it.

The air felt strange.

She shuddered, and rose from the bed.

Most of her gear had been stripped off of her, leaving her only in her lightest layer of clothing. The windows were shuttered. The light in the room seemed to spill down from the ceiling from some inexplicable source; bright as day all the same. She deliberated between moving towards the door or heading for the balcony.

The door was the more obvious choice, she decided.

Balcony it was.

Her fingers touched the curtain, but it wouldn’t move.

“Apologies, my heart. It is not safe for you out there,” a familiar voice intoned.

She stilled, an uneasy shudder in her spine. But when she turned to look, the room seemed empty.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Busy, at the moment. I meant to be there when you woke, but… there is much work to be done,” he replied.

Her mouth went dry.

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing the world,” he whispered, and for a second it was like he was right there, breathing the words into her ear.

She sucked in a breath, and closed her eyes.

“You’re being vague. That isn’t reassuring,” she informed him.

“The specifics, I fear, would suit you even less,” he admitted.

What had she wrought?

One of her hands tightened into a fist.

“Did you do it?” she wondered. “Did you kill all the others and take their souls?”

“Of course,” he confirmed. “I understand your trepidation. You cannot see it as I do. As  _we_  do. But you need not fear; you are still my heart. My dear, lovely, beloved creature. So fragile and small. I should cut you out, but instead I shall keep you close.”

No.

She shook.

“Solas.”

Whatever that was, though, it wasn’t him. Or not  _only_  him. Not anymore.

“It is alright, vhenan,” he crooned.

“Don’t  _patronize_  me,” she spat, anger rising up in the wake of her horror.

“Yes, I suppose that would be unfair. You were right, after all, about so many things. You saw more than most,” he conceded.

The door, she decided. Perhaps the door would work.

She headed for the stairs, half at a run. Reached for the handle.

It opened before she could touch it.

“I would not keep you confined to a single room,” Solas said, gently. “This is protection, not punishment. There is no cause for punishment. We had our disagreement, but it is over now, and no harm done.”

She stood, warily, in the threshold for a moment.

Then she walked through.

The passageway down to the main hall had been completely repaired. The walls there, too, were covered in murals. More abstract in that case. Colours and shapes and strange, broken patterns that made her feel uneasy when she looked at them. Disconnected eyes that followed her steps.

When she made it to the main hall itself, everything was bright and airy.

The dais had been raised higher than usual. Two thrones had been set upon it. One was black as a moonless night, and tall, the border along the backrest lined with carved, ruby eyes that seemed to glare malevolently at the world. The other was slightly smaller and wider. White and silver, woven like branches, with threads of gold set in it.

A long, blood red carpet marked the center of the room. Sconces lined the corners. There were no benches, no comfortable seats for petitioners, and on the walls were painted many prowling wolves. They seemed to stalk her as she headed for the exit.

She wasn’t surprised to find that it wouldn’t open.

“The garden is closed as well. For now. I shall make it safe for you, soon. I know you would not enjoy being indoors for too long,” Solas told her.

“Why isn’t it safe?” she wondered.

“I would tell you, if I feared your imaginings would prove darker than the reality. But I do not think that is the case.”

Her stomach dropped.

“Why?” she wondered. “If it is so horrible, why do it?”

“Surgeons must cut. It is bloody and painful, but it is not done for its own sake. It is done for the future.”

He sounded regretful, at least.

It wasn’t much comfort. But maybe… maybe there was something there that she could still get through to.

“I will make a future worthy of you, ma vhenan.”

“I don’t need that. I just – can I see you?” she asked.

“Soon,” he promised. “I know you think you can sway me. But it is already past that. I am sorry that it hurts you.”

“Please. Please stop,” she asked.

“It will be worth it. I promise you.”

Her heart clenched.

She moved away from the doors.

A round of quiet exploration revealed that the garden and the Undercroft were both sealed off. The tower was still accessible, though none of the doors connecting outside were. On the bottom floor she found that the murals she recalled had been put into place once again; the paintings of the Inquisition, the path that had led her to where she was, now.

“How did you do this?” she wondered.

“I went through your memories while you were sleeping,” Solas replied.

In a day filled with intensely creepy things, that still managed to be noteworthy.

“So I am to have no privacy now?” she surmised.

“It was poorly done of me. My control was not at its best, and I was curious. I apologize. The fool you pledged your heart to the first time would have relinquished you so easily. I will not make that mistake, my heart. You are mine, now and forever.”

She stood in the middle of the room. There was no table stacked with notes. No Eluvian. Just empty space, and haunting memory.

“And what if I do not wish to be yours?” she wondered.

Solas sighed.

“I will not force myself upon you, of course,” he said. “You may do as you please. Within reason. You will live, and you may hate me for all that I am doing, but you will always be my heart.”

“Please,” she asked again.

It was infuriating, but her pleas were all she had. Sandal’s rune was gone, along with most of her gear, and her weapons. The anchor felt subdued in her palm. Somehow she knew, without being told, that if she tried to use it, it wouldn’t work.

A glance down at it confirmed that it was dim, and barely seemed to be there.

“Oh, vhenan.”

He sighed, deeply, and she felt all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A presence suddenly fell into place behind her.

His arms came around her. They were clad in armour, dark and gleaming, and they smelled of smoke and blood. His chest pressed against her back. His hands felt excessively warm through the thin fabric of her clothes. His face leaned in towards her neck, and he inhaled, deeply.

He exhaled, and closed his teeth around the tip of her ear.

“Just. Give me Solas back,” she asked.

“I am still here,” he replied. “I am still here, ma vhenan. I bested them all, in the end. They each have their say, of course, but my voice is still loudest. And I will not share you with them.”

He moved his thumbs across her skin. One of his hands dipped low on her stomach, toying with the bottom of her shirt.

If he was here, she thought, then at least he wasn’t out there, doing whatever terrible thing he was doing.

“Shall I tell you a secret?” he asked, as his other hand migrated up towards her breasts.

“Is it going to be something absolutely horrifying?” she wondered.

He nipped her ear, playfully.

“With enough energy to spare for it, I can be in two places at once now,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes.

“So that’s a ‘yes’, then,” she mused. “Can you read minds, too?”

He hummed in confirmation.

Then he stopped fondling her for a minute – which was good, because her body’s responses to that were very much in conflict with the rest of her – and moved around, so that he was standing in front of her instead.

Her breath caught in her throat.

His  _eyes._

They were black. Pure black. Not just the irises but the whole of them. His skin was pale as bleached bone, and his teeth, when he smiled, were sharp.

He cradled her face in his hands.

“Do you not love this form?” he wondered.

Her heart ached in her chest, and she shook her head. Her eyes burned. A single tear slipped down her cheek.

He caught it with his thumb.

“Oh, but you still love  _me_ ,” he said. Then he leaned forward and claimed her lips; first soft and then fierce, possessive, biting. She pulled back when he drew blood.

A flicker of remorse darted across his features. Then he blinked, and her skin tingled a moment, and the wound closed.

He licked the blood from her lip.

“Ir abelas. I forget how sharp I have become, and how tender you still are.”

She was sorely tempted to punch him in the neck for that comment.

He chuckled.

“Consider it repayment for shooting me,” he suggested, and for half a second, he almost seemed himself again.

She reached for his face.

His features softened as she cradled it between her palms.

“Ma sa’lath. At the very least, if you’re set on the changing the world, don’t do it without me,” she requested.

He sighed.

“You will have your say, I promise you. When the bloodiest work is done. At this stage, you would have only objections.”

“Then maybe it’s  _not a good idea,”_  she suggested.

He chuckled again. Then he raised his hands and clasped hers, and threaded their fingers together.

“That depends on what one wishes to accomplish, and what they are willing to destroy in order to accomplish it. But ask me another favour,” he offered. “Ask until you think of one I can grant.”

“Get rid of the other souls,” she immediately tried, though she knew it was a long shot.

“Next,” he replied, smiling fondly.

“Let me leave Skyhold.”

“Eventually. Try again.”

She let out a breath, thinking furiously.

“Save as many people as you can,” she tried.

“I was already doing that for you,” he admitted. “Think more selfishly, ma vhenan.”

He waited, half smiling, as she thought furiously.

“Give me back my rune?” she tried.

“Hmm,” he replied, considering.

“It was a gift.”

“I will return it, at some point,” he decided. “But I will not underestimate your tenacity in the Fade, nor risk your safety over it. For now, you must try once more.”

His hands were still too warm, and she felt unnervingly exposed, standing there in a flimsy cloth while he was covered head to toe in armour.

She forced herself to push the feeling aside. To straighten, and look into his eyes.

“Spare my friends,” she finally asked. “The people I care about. If you saw my memories, you know who they are.”

He turned that request over for a moment, and then nodded slightly.

“Done,” he declared.

Leaning forward, he pressed another kiss to her lips. A swift one, casual; under other circumstances it would have been sweet.

Then he vanished, smoke and wisps on the air, like a fading dream.

“I must take my leave again. But I will return as soon as I may,” he told her. His voice echoed up the tower overhead, before it fell quiet.

She shivered.

Shuddered.

Folded her arms around herself, and went back to her room.

She had failed him and failed the world, and she didn’t know what would come of it. But there was hope still, she decided. There had to be. If he kept his promise, then… well, the people she cared about were tenacious. Creative. Influential, in some cases. Heroes, even. If anyone out there could figure out how to stop him, it would be them.

And in the meanwhile, she could at least keep his attention divided, as she tried to find some flaw in his prison.

It felt like it was too late, though. Like her last real chance had been lost with the orb.

She tried the windows again.

His voice didn’t interrupt her that time. But neither did she find any way to get the curtains to shift.

In the closet she found clothes. Some part of her was half afraid to open up the chests and drawers and discover flowing, gossamer gowns, like the kinds the tragic noblewomen in Varric’s stories always wore after they went insane. But while there were a few truly gorgeous dresses, mostly she discovered soft tunics and leggings, and a couple sets of very fine light armour.

One such set was silvery, patterned in branches and wolves, and looked a match for the throne in the main hall.

She tried not to think about the obvious implications too closely.

Instead she dressed in the other set, which was more humble – if no less fine – and set about testing all of the stained glass windows she could reach.

The sky outside looked dark. The light that came through the windows, rather than from within Skyhold, shifted strangely.

It reminded her unnervingly of the doomed future she had visited with Dorian.

None of the latches budged, and the glass refused to break.

After several hours of fruitless prying, she tried investigating the space available to her again.

The library was full of books, at least. Many were written in elvish, and very few had titles she recognized. On the slim hope that he may have inadvertently (or perhaps even subconsciously) left her with some information that might actually be helpful, she set about going through the ones she could actually read. Many seemed to be volumes on magic.

Eventually, the light inside began to dim, though; settling into an evening-esque glow.

When her eyes began to tire, she set down the book she was reading.

A hand came down, gently, on the back of her chair.

“I see you have kept yourself occupied,” Solas said.

“It’s a very fine cage you’ve made me,” she replied, coolly.

“And a very tightly sealed one,” he conceded. “You do not deserve to be imprisoned. It is unfair of me to do it. But you must understand. I could grant you power enough to survive what is happening, but then you would use it to oppose me. It would not be enough to succeed, but I might have to fight you. I have no desire to do that, vhenan. And if I do not grant you power enough to survive, then you will die. That, I cannot permit. So you must remain here until it is safe.”

 _“Or_ , you could stop doing what you’re doing, get rid of the souls that  _don’t belong to you,_  and we could avoid this entire awful situation,” she replied.

He exhaled, gustily.

“You know I will not,” he said. “Not even for you. Please stop asking, my heart. It pains me to deny you.”

“I don’t see why I should make this easy,” she replied, tersely.

“Because making it difficult will change nothing?” he suggested.

They fell silent.

After a few minutes, she heard him move; boots on the floor, fabric rustling against his armour.

He came and knelt by her chair. His eyes were still wrong, but his expression was twisted with longing.

“I love you so,” he said. “Please, do not fight me. You cannot win. You know this; you knew it the moment you gave me the orb. Surrender this time, and help me shape what will come next.”

She stared at him a moment.

Then she bowed her head.

“I’ve doomed everyone. Even you,” she whispered.

“No, no, no,” he refuted, clasping her hand. “You have  _saved_  me. And I will save the world. In all that is to come, we will have one another. Let us have one another, my heart. Let it be. It is hard now, but in time, it will be better. I swear it.”

She felt cold and hot and sick with dread and defeat at once.

With nothing left, she reached for him.

“I can’t fight you,” she admitted.

It was true, both in the sense that he was probably powerful enough to obliterate her in an instant, and also in the sense that she couldn’t really bring herself to harm him.

He stared at her a moment.

Then he stood, and extended his hand.

“Vhenan’ara. Come here?” he asked.

Instead of taking his hand, she rose, and pressed herself to him. Let his armour dig into her as she pressed into his warmth, as if she was searching for the part of him that was still Solas. As if she might squeeze it from him, if only she willed it hard enough.

He cradled the back of her head, rested a hand on her lower back, and hummed at her.

The tune vibrated through them both.

She let him lead her back to her room. Down the tower steps and passed the ominous thrones and watching, waiting wolves, until they were surrounded by the airy walls of her bed chamber.

Carefully, she undressed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him strip his own armour off, revealing pale, unmarked skin.

Part of her half expected him to pounce on her. But when she’d finished, and settled onto the edged of the bed, he only stared at her for a long moment. His expression was soft. Worried. Maybe even a little remorseful.

“I have not changed so much that I would attack you,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m off-limits, but the rest of the world is fair game?” she replied.

“Yes,” he confirmed, with a shrug.

 _“Why?”_  she wondered.

“I have told you; because I love you,” he said. “It is the same reason why you cannot harm me. Whatever else has changed, this remains constant. I will love you from afar, if you prefer. You will always have the right to refuse me. I have become more selfish, I think, but not to that extreme.”

She sighed.

“I just wish you were  _you_  and not you plus Dumat plus whoever else. And also that you weren’t destroying the world,” she admitted.

“But I am,” he said, simply.

She stared at him for a long moment.

“Shall I go?” he wondered.

 _You should say ‘yes’,_  she thought.

“No,” she said.

He strode towards her. Looked down at her where she sat, and then reached out, and cupped her chin. Leaning in, he kissed her. Long, slow, lingering kisses that grew deeper each time. The light in the room dimmed further, until they were cast in shadow. She leaned back, her insides tying themselves into knots that twisted and untied, it seemed, with every conflicting thought and emotion.

He murmured comforting nothings against her skin, hands trailing warmth down her sides. Sharp teeth held back behind soft lips. His kisses fell to her neck, down her collarbone, her breast and then dipped down to her stomach.

It was slow and simple and then suddenly he was between her thighs. His tongue laved at her folds, a swift stroke that made her breath hitch in surprise. He held her hips down, thumbs brushing against them as he set about enthusiastically devouring her, the slow pace gone as if it had never been. His mouth was like fire, almost hotter than was comfortable, and his tongue dipped into her and worked over her, sending little shockwaves of pleasure jittering through her with every stroke.

She tried to warn him as she built up, but he only tightened his grip on her hips and redoubled his efforts. She was getting desperate to move, reflexively trying to buck towards his face, but he held her where she was and simply kept on, eating her out until, with a cry, she came.

And then he kept going.

And kept going, after that.

She supposed, under the circumstances, it was foolish to wonder if he was  _tired._  Did he even get tired anymore? And yet the way he kept on, gently pressing his lips to her over-sensitive skin, and running his tongue over her folds before renewing his assault on her, seemed obscenely unreasonable.

“Emma lath,” she begged, as she built up again.

She wasn’t sure if she was asking him to stop or not.

He seemed to decide not.

Another orgasm washed through her.

When he  _kept on going_ , she was sure he’d been lying, and that he meant to kill her like this.

His fingers finally joined in the proceedings, then, as at last he freed her hips to press them into her. She almost took the opportunity to move away, if only because it seemed prudent to at least  _try_  and escape his onslaught, but somehow the idea didn’t quite solidify into action before he crooked his fingers  _just so_  and damn well sent her over again.

 _“Solas,_ ” she gasped.

“Vhenan,” he replied, voice husky. At last he trailed shining kisses back up her trembling body, and she felt limp and languid as he shifted her into position, and eased his way inside. He gave her a moment to adjust.

Then he pulled back and thrust in again, hips snapping, the bed shifting as he drove into her.

The rhythm he set was aggressive, as relentless as his tongue had been. She reached for purchase, grasping flimsy sheets until she finally gave up and just held onto him, instead, and a strange, approving rumble escaped his throat.

She came again, to her amazement, a spark of pleasure less long-lived than the others, and when she did he slowed his pace. Ran his hands along her thighs, and then dragged his touch up to her breasts. She had no idea if  _he_ was close to his own finish or not. He didn’t seem to have much intention of stopping any time soon, for all that he’d slowed down.

One of his palms came to a rest over top of her heart.

“I will make you my queen,” he said. “I will share power with you, and you alone. I will keep you forever. You will never break again, and we will make the world what it should be.”

She stared, lost for another moment. Then she reached, shakily, for his face.

“Will you change me, then?” she wondered.

“Not entirely,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning into her touch, halting for a moment. “I am power incarnate now, vhenan. I will not be so clumsy as to tarnish you. But neither will I let you wither and die.”

“What if I want to wither and die?” she wondered.

“Then I will have to deny you,” he replied, simply.

She closed her stinging eyes.

Gently, he wiped away the tears that slipped free.

“Would you truly leave me?” he asked, and wrapped himself around her. “Would you fly from me, and never return?”

“I should,” she whispered into his shoulder.

“But you will not. Oh, ma vhenan. Whatever twist of fate sent you to me, I thank it.”

He started to move within her again, then, determined strokes as he touched as much of her as he possibly could; as a wash of energy fell over them, and his every touch seemed magnified a thousand fold, rendering her utterly incoherent. She writhed and pleaded and came again, and again, until she was too exhausted to move. With each thrust he seemed to fill up every inch of her.

She let out one last, spent little gasp, and  _finally_  he came.

He looked down at her with great satisfaction, cupping her cheek.

“Mine. My heart,” he murmured.

Soft lifts pressed to her own as she finally gave up on consciousness.

~

The next morning she woke alone, and for a few days after that, didn’t see him.

He spoke to her, though. She found that sometimes she could call for him and he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) answer, but most times, he did. It left her feeling uncomfortably watched, as if there was always one eye fixed to the back of her neck. But there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Except complain.

Which she did.

A lot.

“Why did you make the murals in this passage so creepy?” she asked him, one morning. She was standing outside of her room, feeling particularly ill-at-ease with a set of ominous rectangular shapes.

“Are they creepy? I thought they were colourful,” he replied.

“It’s a very ‘prison of the mind’ sort of atmosphere,” she informed him.

“Forgive me. I was dealing with a great number of conflicting impulses at the time. I shall change it when I can,” he promised.

“How are those ‘conflicting impulses’ treating you, anyway?” she wondered.

“They are more irritating than overwhelming, to be honest. Though, that may be because most of the prominent personality traits have been absorbed into me by now,” he admitted.

“You could always get rid of them,” she suggested.

He sighed.

“Just keep it in mind,” she asked.

“I shall be sure and put it in at least one of them,” he promised, wryly.

Joking about all the immortal god souls he’d eaten.

Sure. Why not?

“What are you doing?” she tried.

“You do not wish to know,” he said.

That was what he usually said, when she asked that question.

On the third night after he left, she fell asleep and found herself trapped in dreams of clawed hands and dark shapes, twisting and turning and wrenching at her, and she fought them back until something roared, and they dispersed, fleeing like rats.

She woke up with her heart thudding in her chest.

“What was that?” she asked.

Silence.

“Solas? What happened?”

The air changed beside her. Cold arms folded around her.

“Apologies,” Solas whispered.

“Are you going to actually tell me what that was?” she wondered.

“No,” he murmured. Then he sucked in a deep breath.

“You are so warm,” he sighed.

“And  _you’re_  a block of ice. What did you do? Go sprinting through the Frostbacks?” she asked, yanking up one of the blankets and throwing it over him.

He chuckled.

“Close,” he whispered.

“Stay here,” she told him, quietly. “Surely whatever horrible thing you’re doing can wait another night.”

There was a pause.

“Tempting. But I cannot,” he denied, pressing a kiss behind her ear. “I will return when I am able.”

Then he was gone again, leaving only questions and cold in his wake.

Dawn brought no further sign of him.

She spent most of the day pacing, wandering, exercising to try and kill her excess energy, and reading through more of the books in the library. Solas responded to her very little, and she worried. The worry for what he was doing was constant. The worry for his well-being fluctuated wildly, and had sharpened to a point by the time evening fell.

She descended from the tower and into the main hall, and looked up to find the subject of her concern sitting in the dark throne.

Naked.

She blinked at him.

“That’s quite a statement,” she observed.

He leaned back.

“Isn’t it, though?” he mused. “Elgar’nan held court this like a few times. He considered it a means of asserting his dominance. Personally I think he was just an exhibitionist.”

She moved closer, raising an eyebrow.

“And you’ve inherited that impulse?” she asked.

He grinned.

“Only where you are concerned,” he replied.

She looked him over. He was half hard, still too pale, with his strange eyes and his familiar freckles. Mostly, she thought he looked cold again. Not that the hall was precisely  _freezing,_ but it wasn’t ‘sit your naked ass in the middle of it’ levels of warm, either.

“Is this a request for throne sex?” she wondered.

He laughed.

“I would consider it more an invitation,” he told her. “Only if you are interested.”

She was, she supposed. Eeriness aside, she still had yet to repay him for his antics the other night, although the throne wasn’t precisely appealing.

Reaching over she trailed a touch across his jaw, and stared into his strange, fathomless eyes for a moment. She missed his old ones. The ones she’d sang foolish songs about, and for a second his expression shifted from amusement to something more somber.

Then she sighed, and kissed him.

She swept her tongue past his lips, delved into his mouth and moved her touch to his neck. Ran her thumb along his pulse, there, before trailing her fingertips down his chest, and then breaking away.

“Your throne is creepy,” she told him.

“It is meant to intimidate,” he replied. His cheeks were a little flushed.

He was entirely disrobed, planted firmly in his seat of self-made power. She stared at him, herself fully clothed – armoured, even – and then reached down and took him in hand.

“It doesn’t intimidate  _me_ ,” she told him.

“Nor should it,” he agreed.

He reached for her, but she batted his hand away, and lowered her face to his lap instead.

She exhaled over him, earning an interested twitch, and then ran her tongue across his length. It didn’t take long for half hard to become fully erect, and she swallowed him down as best she could, pulling back to lick at him, and keeping her hands closed over top of his where they rested on the throne.

He was quiet, at first, only soft little breaths, but gradually his control cracked at the edges and his hips began to jerk. The muscles in his wrists flexed. His soft breaths turned to ragged gasps, turned to moans that echoed through the hall.

It was, again, a long while before he came, spilling down her throat.

She licked him clean, pressed a salty kiss to his lips, and at last let him go.

“Shall I return the favour?” he asks, breathlessly. His gaze darted sideways, to the second throne.

She snorted.

“I think I’ll pass on that, emma lath,” she told him.

Then she turned and headed for the door to the bed chamber.

He didn’t follow.

The next day she was alone again, and more or less expected to remain that way. She didn’t have access to food or water, but she didn’t seem to hunger or thirst, either. But she wasn’t in the Fade. It was decidedly unsettling, and when she asked him about it in the morning, Solas would only say that time’s decay was leaving her well enough alone for the moment.

It made her wonder if she couldn’t somehow go back, and try and change things again.

“That door is closed to you now. I sealed it myself,” Solas informed her.

Still.

“I don’t suppose you could send me Dorian Pavus for a little while? Just to keep me company?” she asked.

“Alas, he is sleeping with the others,” her lover creepily replied.

“Sleeping?” she prodded.

“If your friends had interfered, it would have been difficult to avoid annihilating them,” he said. “But I will not tell you more than that.”

So much for hoping for help from the outside, then.

“So why didn’t you just put  _everyone_  to sleep while you do whatever it is you’re doing?” she wondered.

“Even I have my limits, vhenan,” he admitted.

It was comforting and guilt-inducing all at once, then, to think that she’d managed to save her friends (for who knew what kind of fate) but that others were doubtless suffering.

Once again it seemed she was a phantom trapped in Skyhold, with only the Dread Wolf for company, and chaos beyond the walls.

She leaned back in her chair, and nearly jolted out of her skin when a hand came down her shoulder.

Solas smiled pleasantly at her.

“Oh,” she said, not sure why she was so surprised this time, of all times, to see him.

“I have secured the garden for you,” he informed her. “Would you care to step outside?”

She considered declining, just on principle. But honestly, she was going stir crazy, and the prospect of actually being  _outside_  was an immense relief. So she only nodded, and took his hand when he offered it to her, his gloves crinkling beneath her grasp.

The garden was beautiful. Not the dead space she’d last seen it as, nor the practical sanctuary it had become in the other timeline, nor the surreal expanse of strange plants it had been in the Fade, but something caught between the latter two. There were flowering fruit trees and potted flowers, and overhead a gleaming barrier, that distorted the sky beyond it into strange, radiant patterns.

She stared upwards for a long moment.

Solas moved to her back, curling his arms around her.

“It is only temporary,” he reiterated. “Soon I will offer you much better things.”

“You know what I would prefer,” she murmured.

“Yes. But in lieu of that, you might still enjoy some pleasant gifts.”

He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, pulled her flush against him and sighed. One of his arms stayed wrapped around her, while the other crept under her shirt, and then down, unlacing the top of her pants so he could slip beneath the fabric. She gasped as he slipped his hand between her thighs.

“Should I stop?” he asked.

“No,” she allowed, breathing in the scent of the flowers as he stroked her.

He moved his touch in slow, circular motions, and she began to pant as the heat and pleasure built up. Through the crotch of his trousers she felt him harden against her rear, and she ground backwards, startling a groan out of him.

“Ma sa’lath,” she breathed.

His hold on her tightened for a moment, finger slipping inside of her.

Then he withdrew.

She turned, questioning; saw him fumble a moment with the clasp on some of his armour. Then he stopped, and his eyes flashed, and she was startled by the sudden disappearance of every buckle and stitch of clothing between the two of them.

“Impatient?” she asked.

“I have become surprisingly voracious,” he conceded. “I suspect it is the excess of power.”

Then he looked at her for a moment, then. His expression was difficult to read, but if she had to guess, she’d say he was enjoying the view of her standing naked in the garden.

It wasn’t precisely a hardship to stare at him, either. Creepy eyes notwithstanding.

“I still have my cheekbones,” he told her, reaching out and reeling her in.

He pressed his lips to her neck.

“Why  _do_  your eyes look like that?” she wondered.

“Eyes show what is within. Windows to the soul,” he answered.

Her heart twisted.

He planted a kiss over top of it. As if he knew.

He probably did.

Then his fingers found her again, and she closed her eyes and reached for him in return, until he coaxed her to the grass. She sank on top of him, and looked into his black, black eyes as she set a slow and languid pace, searching for something until he closed them and rolled her over, and thrust into her with frantic need instead.

She came twice before he gave one last inward thrust, burying himself deep as he could, and came.

For a moment afterwards he was languid and relaxed. He leaned against her, and sighed, and she closed her eyes and kissed him.

Then her eyes snapped open as she felt him begin to harden inside her again.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” she asked.

He chuckled.

“No. But I can withdraw, if you would prefer.”

“It’s alright,” she decided. “Although eventually I’ll get too tired.”

“I can fix that,” he murmured, and she felt a wash of magic settle over her, soothing and revitalizing at once. “Though it is likely I will run out of time to linger before I run out of interest in doing so.”

“And is this your primary interest in lingering?” she wondered.

She missed him, she realized. She missed simply having his company. Being able to do tasks with him, to walk and talk and sit and watch him paint.

He pressed his brow against hers.

“I am insatiable; but your company in any capacity is a treasure,” he assured her.

Damned mind-reading.

“That’s getting irritating,” she informed him.

“I am still figuring out how to refrain from it,” he admitted. Then his hips twitched, and any further comments she might have made were lost in a breathy moan as her nerves tingled.

He thrust into her again, aggressive and needy, and this time as they found a rhythm he began to whisper into her ear.

“I can give you so much more like this. You would have been fleeting, and now you will be a goddess. Mine. My goddess. My love, ma sa’lath, so beautiful. Let me unravel you.”

Magic cracked and her senses heightened strangely, and every touch felt electric; every inward thrust stole her breath. She tried to hold on but she found it nigh impossible, and she came, and came again, and again, until she was languid and near senseless but for the pleasure.

“Yes,” he breathed. “More. Let me have you.”

 _Already do,_  she thought, more baffled than anything else.

But it began to change, then. The feelings were overwhelming, and then they became more than overwhelming. It was hard to describe. Almost like Dumat’s cacophony, but everywhere, in every sense. It grew and grew and she felt like a candle in a windstorm. She tried to hold on; stand her ground against the gale. Regain her sense. She fumbled and reached and then, as swiftly as it had begun, it stopped.

She shuddered.

Arms held her. A hand ran in soothing patterns across her back.

“I am sorry, I am sorry, forgive me,” he whispered. “I lost control, forgive me. I did not mean to. You are alright. I have you, you are alright.”

She drew in a few shaky breaths.

“What was  _that?”_  she demanded.

“I lost control,” he repeated.

“Is that what you are now? Is that what is happening to you?” she wondered, horrified.

“No,” he said. “No, it is different for me. I drew you too close. Forgive me, it was not my intent. Ma vhenan, ir abelas. It will not happen again.”

She leaned against him until she no longer felt like the world was spinning.

“You may have been overestimating yourself when you promised I wouldn’t break,” she said.

His grip around her tightened.

She wondered just how vastly he had changed to be able to handle such things. She wondered how much of him really  _could_  be Solas, in that. Her hands slipped from him, and for the first time she felt afraid – not for the world, and not just for him, but for herself, too.

To something like that, could she ever be more than an interesting toy?

And how quickly would he tire of her?

“No, no, no,” he whispered, and took his face in her hands. “No, it is not like that. You are the anchor, vhenan. You are my only comfort; my only mercy.”

“You should have others,” she told him.

“Perhaps. When it is done,” he replied, and then pressed his forehead to hers. “Do not fear. Please, I cannot bear it. They all fear me, and rightly so, but you should not. It was a mistake, but I will not make another. I love you, I swear it.”

Slowly, she pulled back.

Stared into his dark, dark eyes.

And prayed, with her last hope for everything, that it was the truth.


	2. Chapter 2

He kept his distance, for a while after the garden.

She wasn’t sure if it was because he felt less welcome, or because he was trying to give her some space to recover, or if it was because he doubted his ability to keep his promise not to… slip up again. Probably some combination of the three, if she had to guess.

And she did, because when she asked him plainly, he hedged.

“There is much to be done,” he said, which was about as illuminating as ‘you would prefer not to know what horrible thing I’m doing right now’.

She had to save him.

Had to, had to save him, even if she couldn’t begin to fathom how. That barest taste of – of whatever that was, had been devastating. That was destruction, pure and simple, and she didn’t think any soul could survive it.

But for all her desire, she was still right where she’d started; trapped, and unable to fathom a means of stopping him.

She sat in the garden, and stared at her mark.

It wouldn’t open a rift. She’d tried, for hours, until she’d exhausted herself. Listening to him remind her that it wasn’t going to work. Trying to talk her into doing something less stressful and pointless, until he’d finally given up.

He’d made one of his rare reappearances, then. Dark armour and pale skin, and he’d kept his distance. Hadn’t reached for her or touched her at first, and she’d found herself reluctant to make any move towards him, either.

“Get rid of them,” she asked him again.

“You know I cannot,” he replied.

“And you know  _I_  will not stop asking,” she returned, brittle and furious and frightened.

So, so frightened.

His face fell.

“No, do not fear me.”

“But I do!” she snapped. “You have made me afraid, and I’ll be afraid until I know we’re both safe and together.”

“Safe, and together…” he echoed, and finally reached for her.

His hand brushed her cheek.

Then he pulled it back, quickly, and shook his head.

“I am sorry,” he said. “You must be patient. You must trust me.”

He didn’t even trust himself.

She supposed he heard that thought, as his expression twisted. But he didn’t answer it, and a moment later he was gone, and she was as alone as she ever seemed to be.

Day by day, when she went out to the garden, she would consider her mark.

A piece of him and a piece of her. Maybe it couldn’t open an escape route, but it was still there. He’d called her his anchor. They were connected by this; however it had been changed by Corypheus, and then by herself, there  _had_  to still be something of him, too. A piece of his power. That was what it had started as.

Maybe she could… pull him out? Somehow?

And then what? Leave whatever writhing ball of crammed-together god souls was left to continue wreaking havoc without even the benefit of his temperance?

She didn’t imagine that anything remaining would be any more sane or reasonable than he was. Probably a lot less.

But if it could save him…

It was a long shot, at best. Maybe if she’d thought of it when it was just him and Dumat. Maybe if she had more of an understanding of how such things even  _worked_ , but he had thousands of years of experience in these matters; and she had hardly any. It was like Dorian had once said. She didn’t even know how it worked, she just wiggled her fingers and boom. Something happened.

Just waving and hoping for the best.

What a joke.

But at least it was something she could do.

So she wiggled her fingers, and flailed at the air, and tried all the windows and doors again.

They spoke less frequently, and then even more less frequently, and the silence crushed into her. She became acutely aware of how alone she was. How empty the rooms were.

It was weeks before he reappeared again; standing in the throne room, with his back towards her.

Fully clothed, at least.

He chuckled a little.

“I do not think you would welcome the sight of me undressed at the moment,” he said.

Then he turned towards her, and her breath caught again.

Pale, white scales trailed up the visible skin of his neck, and the line of his jaw. They dusted over his skull and cheekbones. Black veins spread in tiny webs from his lips, and the corners of his eyes. The shadows of his face were more pronounced. Hollow.

He looked like some eldritch corpse.

For a second she was torn between the impulse to move back and to move forward.

The impulse forward won.

“Solas,” she said. “What happened?”

He blinked, and then blinked again. Looked down at his gloved hands.

“What?” he wondered.

Slowly, carefully, she moved forwards, and pressed her fingers to the scales on his skin. He was hot to the touch, and his flesh fairly thrummed, flush with some strange energy.

He raised a hand and placed it over her own. She settled her palm more firmly against his cheek.

“Oh,” he said, and sighed.

She rubbed her thumb against his cheekbone. One of the scales flaked off, and fluttered down to the floor, pale and a little sharp. The next one grazed her skin, the edge fine enough to draw a tiny line of blood. It smeared across the bone-white palour of his cheek, and he stared at her with his black, black eyes.

She looked for him in there, somewhere.

He let out another breath, and the scales vanished. The black veins cleared, and on another breath his features filled out a little more. He nuzzled her palm. Licked the blood from her thumb, and sealed the wound with a kiss and the tiniest flare of magic.

“Ir abelas,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked again.

“I forgot,” he said, simply.

“Forgot what?”

“How to be small,” he said. “How to be soft. Not that I can be, so very much. But soft enough to touch, at least. Soft enough to touch you.”

He did, then, with gloved hands tipped in sharp points that just barely grazed the skin of her neck.

She cupped his face. Framed it with both hands, and settled her marked palm firmly against him.

He smiled at her.

“I am still here,” he said.

“And who, precisely, is telling me that?” she wondered.

Leaning forward, he tipped his brow against her own.

“Solas,” he promised. “Fen’Harel.”

She thought of Dumat, and his subtle voice, sinking into her mind and making her think that his thoughts were her own. But she supposed, if it came to it, anyone who  _wasn’t_  Solas could kill her where she stood. Just with the blink of all that power in him.

His grip on her tightened, a little.

“It is me,” he swore. “It is only that I forget, sometimes, when I get too far away.”

Too far away.

Somehow, she didn’t think he was talking about physical distance.

Carefully, she shifted, and pressed her lips to his.

Seeking. Searching.

She couldn’t lose him, couldn’t let him get lost. If she could anchor him, then she would. If her touch could help, then she’d touch him. Even if she was still afraid. She was more afraid of what would happen, of what creature might appear in his place, and where  _he_  would go, if he got ‘too far away’ for too long.

“No,” he said, gently. “Not if you are afraid. It is alright, vhenan. I will not take what you do not wish to give. Things are not so dire.”

He stepped back, and let her go.

She believed, then, that at least  _most_  of him was probably himself.

For the moment.

Reaching a decision, she caught his arm.

“You are staying, for now,” she told him.

He smiled a little.

“Is that a command, my queen?” he asked her.

She would have rolled her eyes, she thought, if she’d had the levity for it.

“I’m no queen, but yes, it’s a command,” she decided.

Then she pulled at his arm, and gently began to tug him up the hall, and towards the bed chamber. Keeping her grip tight on his armour, even though it felt uncomfortably hot against her palm.

He followed her with an air of amused indulgence that she frankly could have done without. Though she supposed, in all fairness, he  _was_  indulging her. He probably knew exactly what she had planned, and he could have broken her grip with very little trouble.

He didn’t.

He was even solicitous enough not to answer her thoughts.

“Have you figured out how to refrain from reading my mind?” she wondered.

“Not quite,” he admitted. “I am attempting to be more tactful about it, however.”

Or more secretive.

“A fair point. I have kept many things from you,” he agreed.

She let him go when they were actually in the bed chamber, and then tapped a finger against his chest plate.

“Off,” she told him.

He stared at her, gaze soft again, and after a moment, the entire suit he was wearing obligingly vanished.

She stripped herself, and felt his gaze on her. She preferred it, she thought, to letting him do it all the more convenient way. Made it all seem just a tiny bit less strange. It seemed to garner some rather obvious interest from him, too, but she ignored that as she finished, and drew him to the bed, and nudged him until he was lying with his back pressed against her front.

She flattened her left palm over his heart, and pressed her right to the skin of his stomach, resting above the covers. He was still warm enough that they would have been a stifling.

“Sleep,” she told him.

“I do not, any longer,” he admitted.

“Close your eyes and try,” she said.

He let out a breath, mostly amused; but after a moment he obliged her, and relaxed – poorly – against the pillows.

Alright, that wasn’t going to work.

Her left arm was pinned beneath him. She kept it in place, kept the anchor over his heart, more optimism than any certainty that it would do him good, and then began to move her right. Slow, long strokes across his stomach, and chest, and shoulder, and thigh. The top of his arm. The skin of his abdomen. Then she took him in hand and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

“You do not have to,” he said.

“I know,” she assured him, and laid down another kiss.

He was painfully hard, though, and she worked her wrist carefully, pressing her thumb gently against his hood and, when he began to leak, spreading the moisture to ease the friction of her ministrations. After a while he began to buck into her palm. When he got too frantic she stopped, and went back to kisses and long, gentle strokes, until he seemed to ease again.

By the time he spilled over her palm, it felt like days had passed. Her arm was tired. But his skin had cooled, some, and his breaths were deep, and the tight tension in his shoulders had eased enough that she no longer felt like she was curled around a wooden plank.

“Go to sleep,” she told him, again.

“I do not sleep any more,” he repeated; though his tone was sincerely apologetic that time.

She hummed a lullaby against him, and pressed in close.

“Do not sing,” he whispered.

“You’re not the one who hates the sound of it,” she reminded him.

He let out a breath; and then a hum, following her tune until he tapered off into pliant stillness. He wasn’t really sleeping, she didn’t think. He wasn’t really dreaming. She never thought she’d miss his sleepiness, but she did.

She missed the wolf who dreamed.

He clasped her right hand, and pressed it next to her left. Threaded their fingers together.

“I miss you,” she said.

“I know,” he told her.

“I’m still afraid,” she admitted.

“…I know that, too.”

She held him, though, and even if sleep refused to claim him, it eventually took her instead.

When she woke her arms were empty.

~

He came back that evening, to her surprise.

She was reading in the tower. He sank into the chair beside hers, near silently; a pale wraith, all sharp points and jagged edges in the corner of her eye.

Carefully, she finished the paragraph she was on, and then looked up and met his gaze.

“Have a nice day?” she asked him.

His lips twitched.

“By almost any standard – no,” he admitted. “It could not be described as ‘nice’. Productive, perhaps.”

“Destructive?” she guessed.

He inclined his head.

“In this case, they are much the same thing,” he said.

“And here I always thought they were more or less opposite.”

“An over-simplification, and you know it,” he told her, before glancing down at the book in her hands. “Fiction?”

“I felt like I needed an escape,” she admitted.

He sighed.

“My apologies, again. I had hoped it would be finished by now. But I fear I have had to reduce my pace.”

Not that she was necessarily sad to hear it, but she felt a flare of worry, nonetheless. She put the book down.

“Why? Is someone actually thwarting you?” she wondered.

“It is no matter,” he said, and then refused to speak any further on the subject.

He stayed for the better part of the evening, though. Just talking. Apart from the eeriness of his countenance and the frequent odd turns of the conversation, it was almost like being in a dream with him again. Simply sitting, and conversing, and trying to figure things out.

Except that the monster their little dream room had hidden them from was no longer outside the walls.

He came back the next evening, and it was more or less the same. And then the next, he found her crouched in the garden, attempting to dig her way under the wall.

“That will not work,” he politely informed her.

“Worth a shot,” she replied, and kept going.

After a few minutes he sank down beside her. A few minutes more and she finally did conceded defeat, at least for the moment – on the off chance that she actually broke through, doing so with her insanely powerful captor sitting right beside her probably wouldn’t avail her much.

He wavered, almost leaning against her. Straightening again, until she sighed, and pulled his head into her lap.

The breath he let out was heavy. He slipped his eyes closed. Spidery, black veins ran along the corners of them.

There were no scales, at least.

She ran her thumb gently across the veins until they faded away.

“Do they disappear because I’m bringing your attention to them, or because my touch actually chases them away?” she wondered.

“Yes,” he replied.

When she trailed her hand down his cheek, he turned, and caught her palm with his lips. She brushed her fingertips over them, and they parted briefly, revealing the tips of his sharp, sharp teeth.

“Why are they pointed?” she wondered.

After a moment, and with care, she slipped a finger into his mouth and gently tapped the tips. Then she withdrew.

“Should they not be?” he wondered. Then his expression cleared a little. “Oh. Yes, no, I think… I wished to warn you. Perhaps the eyes would have been enough. I cannot recall what I thought I was accomplishing with a warning, though.”

He focused for a moment, and as she watched, his teeth flattened, and the pointed edges dulled. The canines stayed too sharp, but the rest seemed to return to some semblance of normalcy.

It didn’t really help. But it was sort of interesting to watch.

His freckles were gone, she realized, and wondered if they’d been gone the last time she saw him, too. As she thought of it, though, they came back.

“You’re losing more of yourself,” she told him.

“Only the inconsequential parts,” he replied.

Her heart sank.

“No such thing,” she whispered, and leaned down and pressed her lips to his brow. “Get rid of them.”

He sighed.

“Please stop asking me that.”

“I will, once you do it.”

A brittle little chuckle escaped him, and he turned his head towards her; nuzzling his face into her stomach and wrapping his arms around her. She had no idea how he could possibly find it comfortable. She’d taken to wearing armour during the day; clutching at some of the illusion of security it gave her. But he still pressed up against it as if it was soft as skin, and stayed there, just breathing, for a long moment.

“Perhaps, when it is done,” he said. “I will get rid of  _one_  of them.”

She swallowed, and curved her hand around the back of his head.

“If it’s the one I suspect, and if he’s giving you enough trouble to actually contemplate it, then I’m thinking you should get rid of him  _now_ ,” she told him.

“You think I should get rid of all of them this very instant,” he countered.

“Yes. But  _especially_  that one.”

He pulled back, sat up across from her, and regarded her with those painful, fathomless eyes of his.

She sucked in a breath and let it out again. Long and slow. Then she looked at him, squarely.

“Alright. I loathe what you’re doing but I can’t stop you from doing it. I can wish you would get rid of those souls, but I can’t make you do it. So let’s set aside that I hate the entire concept of this whole situation, and break it down to the simplest question. Do you need him?” she asked.

He tilted his head, and seemed to contemplate that for a moment.

Though whether he was actually contemplating it or conferring with the voices in his head or whatever was going on inside of him was a tougher call to make.

“Yes,” he finally decided.

She raised an eyebrow.

“You have all of the Creators in there, plus you, plus whatever else you’ve  _undoubtedly_  gone and found while I’ve been stuck here, and you still need this particular soul?” she asked. “Why?”

“Rebuilding the world will take phenomenal amounts of power,” he said.

“Dumat wants to destroy, not rebuild,” she told him, bluntly. “He’ll do everything he can to sabotage you. Is that really worth whatever extra bit of power having him around affords?”

To her surprise, that… actually seemed to get through.

Though perhaps it was only wishful thinking on her part.

But he paused, at least, and his expression grew distant. After a moment his jaw tightened, and his brows furrowed, and he was silent for a long while.

“I must consider it further,” he finally decided.

“It bears keeping in mind that not all of your considerations will be coming from  _you_ ,” she reminded him.

He gave her a long look.

“He frightens you. More than the others.”

After a beat, she shrugged.

“Shouldn’t he?” she wondered.

He didn’t answer that.

A moment later he was gone, and she found herself alone in the garden again, with her uselessly optimistic efforts to try and tunnel her way out.

She sucked in a few breaths and got back to it.

It proved about as fruitless as expected.

The next couple of days passed in comparative solitude. Solas still spoke to her when she talked out loud, though, and assured her that he was alright when she questioned him. And then refused to say much more. One morning she woke up to find that the paintings in the corridor outside of the bedroom had changed; going from a kaleidoscope of unsettling shapes to thin dark lines, and shades of black and green that echoed a forest at night, instead.

Still creepy, but at least a preferable  _style_  of creepy, she decided.

The morning after that, she opened her eyes and found him sitting on the edge of her bed.

His back was towards her.

She braced herself as she sat up, not sure what she’d find.

But when he turned towards her, he looked normal.

Well. His  _new_  normal. No scales or back veins or anything particularly unsettling. His teeth were pointed again, and his freckles were gone, but it could have been worse, she supposed.

“Good morning,” he said.

“You’ve never come in the morning before,” she noted, trying to shake off the last dregs of her exhaustion.

“Have I not? How remiss of me. Sleep makes you even softer than usual. I should enjoy the sight more often,” he decided.

“Quit calling me  _soft_ ,” she told him, and reached over, and tweaked his ear. It was too early to be unnerved, she decided.

He smiled.

Then he leaned forward and kissed her nose.

“Soft,” he said, before dropping his lips to hers – a surprisingly brief peck. “Soft,” he breathed over them, before moving his mouth to her cheek. “Soft,” he concluded. “My heart is so soft.”

“That word is swiftly losing its meaning,” she grumbled.

“Hmm,” he purred back, and nuzzled her neck. He was warm – though not unsettlingly hot, thankfully – and he’d had the foresight, for once, to not wear jagged, pointy armour. She had the niggling suspicion that he’d seen her sleeping and actually remember that sharp edges and bare skin weren’t the greatest combination ever all on his own, and had found a middle ground between the ‘dread warlord’ and ‘completely nude’ looks. Though the clothing he’d chosen was still peculiar, dark, and uncommonly fine.

She slumped back into the covers and took him with her. It was all just sort of pleasantly warm, for a while, as he slipped a hand under her shirt, and she kissed him, and trailed her fingers across his jaw.

Then he rocked against her hip, and she was dreamy and far away and suddenly her nerves jolted awake; a visceral tingling of unease as she recalled what had happened the last time she felt hazy whilst under his touch.

He stilled.

“It will not happen again,” he promised.

“It was an accident the first time. It’ll probably be an accident the next time, too,” she reasoned.

“There will be no ‘next time’.”

He stopped, though, and pulled back, offering her only one more kiss before he left the room.

As in, walked of the door.

Almost like a normal person.

She blinked, and pushed past her disorienting tumble of emotions and impulses. Got up and got dressed, and then found him again, waiting for her in the repainted stairwell.

“Better?” he asked, gesturing to the walls.

“Much,” she confirmed.

He nodded, satisfied, and then offered her his arm.

“I have something to show you,” he said.

_Oh, please don’t be anything creepy,_  she thought, as she accepted his offer.

He tilted his head.

“Perhaps somewhat. But I believe you will like it anyway,” he decided.

Well that didn’t sound ominous at all.

He walked her down the stairwell, and out into the main hall. Past the unsettling thrones, and straight to the main doors.

Then he glanced at her, and grinned, and with a small gesture from his free arm, sent them flying open.

She froze in shock.

For one split second she almost thought that he must have finished. That the world had been completely destroyed, and then utterly remade. But, to her relief, the instant passed. The sky overhead was shimmering and strange, the same as it was in the garden. The stone steps leading down were white. Almost gleaming in the sunlight.

The courtyard was full of plants.

Slender trees and creeping vines, and flowering bushes. Again, some halfway point between dream and reality, it seemed. The air smelled strange. Almost clear, but electric, too. Like a building storm. Or the aftermath of one. A light mist drifted across the top of the battlements, and flooded down over the stables.

“I have secured it,” he told her. “You have the run of the entire fortress, now. If anything displeases you, tell me.”

“You know what displeases me,” she murmured.

He sighed.

“Vhenan,” he said, and kissed her temple. “Will it help, at least?”

She drew in a breath, and looked it all over once again. A prison was a prison, but having more places to walk to, more – relatively – open sky over her head, and growing things around her,  _would_  be a relief.

“Yes. It will help,” she decided.

He smiled. Leaned in, and stole another kiss.

“Good,” he decided. “I will leave you to it.”

“Not going to give me the tour?” she wondered, feeling a little more confident with her wakefulness, and slipped her arms around his shoulders.

He inhaled.

“Tempting,” he murmured.

She kissed him again. Tried to focus on the clarity of the moment, and the feel of his lips, and the steadiness of her grip on him as she chased the warmth of his mouth.

“Stay,” she said, between breaths.

His hands rested on her hips.

“You are still afraid of me,” he murmured.

She pulled back a little, and took his chin in her hand.

“If you’re going to keep him with you, then I’m going to be frightened when you’re around,” she said, plainly.

He stared at her a moment.

“In that case, I had best cease delaying,” he decided. “When this is done, I will get rid of him. You may even watch, if you like. So you will know beyond a doubt.”

_“Or,”_  she said. “You could-”

He sighed, and kissed her before she could finish.

“No. I cannot. I  _do_  need his power,” he cut her off, apologetic.

Then he stepped back.

“Enjoy your gift, ma vhenan, as much as you are able to.”

He left, in a brief wavering of the air; like stepping through a wall of water. She stared at the place where he’d been for a moment, before blowing out a long, frustrated breath, and folding her arms.

Trying to trick him into less insane behaviour, she decided, was impeded  _significantly_  by his ability to read her mind. And trying to seduce him into it was impeded both by her not being much of a seductress, and him being… him.

With little else to do, she set about exploring the grounds he’d unveiled for her.

They were, unsurprisingly, a bit creepy. He hadn’t seemed to be able to decide what to do with the tavern, and so it was a more less empty, dark space, covered by images of shadowy figures and roaring dragons. Generally breathing fire on said figures while they writhed in agony. She got the distinct impression that he’d been shooting for ‘exciting’ and had instead squarely landed in the vicinity of ‘horrifying’.

The stables, at least, were decorated with images of leaping halla and charging harts, and even a few horses; though they were more like an afterthought. The only real hiccup in the décor were the carved halla skulls hanging outside each of the stalls.

She stared at them a moment.

“Vhenan,  _why…?”_

No reply.

After a moment, and with a profound internal shrug, she headed back outside again.

The staircases and ladders up to the top of the wall were gone. She found that most of the interior doorways that led out to the walls were still sealed, too, even though most others weren’t. So no getting too close to the giant barrier blocking her view of the outside world, it seemed.

Well.

Not unless she climbed it.

Which was, of course, precisely what she spent most of the rest of the day trying to do. It felt a little bit like he might have done it on purpose, though. Like she was a pet being left specific toys to play with to try and distract her from the monotony of her cage.

Still, that didn’t mean there  _wasn’t_  the potential for her to find something he might have overlooked.

Just that it was still extremely unlikely.

“Is there any particular reason I should stay away from the barrier?” she wondered.

No response.

A twinge of worry settled into her. He didn’t usually ignore her when she asked him clear and direct questions like that.

“Solas? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

A few more inquiries went unanswered. She began checking at random intervals, growing more and more concerned. But by evening, she’d still heard nothing.

She found herself pacing through the courtyard, armed and tense, as if expecting an attack.

As it happened, that was a good instinct.

The closed-off sky was mostly dark, but still scattered traces of an eerie glow across Skyhold. Shards of green and yellow, occasionally shifting to red. She squinted at the barrier, and after a moment, decided that something was striking it. Or otherwise assaulting it, somehow. With each red pulse there was the faintest  _boom_ , like a rod striking a very distant drum.

Like thunder.

It could have been a storm, she supposed, building on the outside. But the regularity of it made her think otherwise. Something was pointedly and repeatedly hitting the same spot.

Weakening it.

_It’s getting louder_ , she thought.

And then a dragon crashed through.

No, scratch that –  _two_  dragons.

She scrambled backwards as the sky broke into shards, sheltering herself in the main stairwell leading up to the keep. The air burst with heat and light, and rage, as two massive, scaled forms struck the ground in a tangled mess of wings and limbs and pained, furious roars.

Her first thought was that the beasts were fighting. They seemed to snap and snarl at each other for a moment after they crashed down, leaving a burning sky in the wake of a twisting barrier. One blue, the other red, both a cataclysm of noise and movement and chaos; changing the entire landscape of her situation in a single instant.

Then the blue huffed at the red, more frustration than aggression, and the air changed again as threads of distorted light erupted from them.

She moved further into the shadows beneath the stairs as two figures replaced the dragons.

Elves.

Decidedly  _tall_  elves.

Who almost immediately began furiously cursing at one another in elvish.

She could make out only a little of their conversation. They spoke too quickly, and used too many phrases she was unfamiliar with. But it was enough for her to glean that they were angry with one another about how something had just gone, and that they only had a little bit more time left – time for what, she wasn’t sure – and that they were looking for something.

But they didn’t seem to know what that ‘something’ was.

After a minute they split up. One – the woman of the pair – headed inside, while the other, a man, made for the stables.

Tall elves who’d turned into dragons, who’d smashed the barrier around Skyhold.

She had no idea if they would qualify as friend or foe, but the opportunity was obvious. Once they were both out of sight, she bolted, heading straight for the bridge.

It was gone.

The middle had been collapsed, leaving only the steep drop and the posts marking either side.

Undeterred, she look stock of the surroundings, and then set about climbing down the mountain the hard way instead.

Up overhead the sky was a sea of crashing energies. It looked like the dark future she had once visited; like, but worse. More chaotic. Fire ate a ring around the high moon, and the clouds were storms, crackling and crashing into one another. The wind howled, flinging icy air at her back, before it rose upwards and melted shards of snow and hale in pockets of searing heat that seemed to scorch by at regular intervals, and pelted rain against the mountain instead.

She was struck by the chilling realization that the world would have been better off if she had died in Redcliff.

She gritted her teeth, and kept climbing.

_Where’s Solas?_

The thought pressed at her, worry and a gnawing, clutching fear that she tried to ignore while she seized this opportunity. There was no sign of him, not anywhere, and she couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t notice something like this. He seemed to watch her almost always; he’d  _know_  if two… probably ancient god-like beings broke into Skyhold.

But he hadn’t answered her since this morning.

_Later,_  she told herself. _Worry about the well-being of the world-destroying god later._

A sharp whistle – different from the shrieking of the wind between the mountains – caught her attention, and she looked up and saw the female elf staring down at her; eyes narrowed and furious, like burning embers.

Something sharp and forceful yanked her away from the rocks.

Her stomach lurched horribly. For a moment she was held by something she couldn’t see; some magical force dangling her over a fatal drop. Then she was swept upwards, and a vice-like grip closed around her throat. The woman – face scarred, eyes still furious, awash in magic – snapped something that, between linguistic barriers and the weather, she had no hope of deciphering.

Or replying to, since her throat was steadily being crushed.

She reached, reflexively, for a dagger that wasn’t there with her right hand, and scrabbled with her left at the grip at her.

An emerald gleam caught her eye.

It caught her captor’s, too, and they both seemed to notice it together.

The mark.

The mark was working again.

In a decision inspired mostly by her swiftly-diminishing air supply, she wrenched her legs up, and kicked out, as hard as she could, at her captor’s body.

With a painful  _wrench_  the hand on her was forced to let go as the elven woman stumbled back, and she herself plummeted over the side of the mountain pass. A twist of her wrist, and she tore open a rift between her and the distant, unforgiving ground.

Then she tumbled into it.

It wasn’t like crossing into the Fade usually was.

It was more like crashing through a tunnel made of crystal and glass shards.

For several long moments she was still falling, and she wondered if she’d just managed to get herself killed. That probably wouldn’t bode well for the world, all things considered. Unless Solas was dead, somehow, too.

But then she landed, and didn’t instantly die.

So, there was that.

She hit the ground on her side. Her hip smashed into a hard surface, and her shoulder wrenched, and she wasn’t quite sure if she’d just broken half the bones in her body, but it felt like it.

For a few long breaths she lay where she was, and waited to see if she’d just earned herself a slightly _slower_  death.

But no enemies fell upon her, no magic assailed her, and gradually she realized she could move. Painfully, but it seemed she was more battered, cracked, and bruised than outright broken. The air around her felt… calmer, too. Still strange, but in a way that seemed almost familiar, and when she finally sat up and looked around, she understood why.

The Crossroads.

She was in the Crossroads.

Or at least, somewhere that looked a lot like it.

A little bewildered, she got, slowly, to her feet. Stone monuments and crumbling roads loomed in mist and shadow. Winding trees bore tiny blossoms, and the path beneath her feet was smooth and still, twisting its way towards platforms lined with broken Eluvians.

“…Huh,” she said.

A quick inspection of her mark revealed that the anchor was still gleaming. Maybe not  _strongly_ , but as much as it generally had before everything took its sharp, southward turn. She could feel it, too; that certain twisting of power, resting inside her flesh. It didn’t pull as it would if the Fade was close. It was different.

He’d done something to the Fade, she suspected. Or something to the Crossroads.

But apparently the anchor did more than either of them thought.

Lucky for her, or she’d be a smear mark on the Frostbacks right now.

She drew in another breath, and then paused as the ground beneath her feet abruptly trembled. The air shuddered, and her bones shook, and for an instant it felt like something very, very distant had just loosed a  _shattering_  roar.

The sneaking suspicion that she knew the owner of said roar coiled around her heart.

_Well, at least he’s probably alive, then,_  she reasoned.

Though she felt a wash of guilt for anyone unlucky enough to be present for that reaction.

A few halting steps around the Crossroads revealed nothing much of use to her. She supposed she ought to keep moving, just in case he figured out where she’d gone, and so she did; following twisting paths until she couldn’t any more. Then she found a small alcove, and eased herself down to rest, and tried to inspect her injuries a little better.

There were cuts and scrapes on nearly every exposed patch of skin, including several across her face. A slash on her cheek dripped itching blood down her collar. Her entire right side was basically one big bruise, already beginning to settle into its painful colour palette, and her hipbone was a wellspring of agony.

Probably cracked.

Her shoulder had dislocated, but her arm wasn’t broken. She braced herself for a new wealth of pain as she used the half-fallen wall behind her to get it back into place. Then she took a minute to sob and curse and scream a little, because there was no one else around to hear it and she really, truly felt like it was appropriate to the situation.

“Fucking shit fuck,  _fuck you,_ shitty dragon lady,  _fuck you, Solas,”_  she concluded.

Then she slumped back down, almost immediately regretted it as her hip sent another rush of screaming agony through her as thanks.

Dammit.

Shit.

Out of the prison and into… a place that wasn’t much easier to escape.

She glanced at her mark.

Well, maybe a  _little_  easier. In potential. Though, if walking out of it was anything like falling into it, a return trip would have to wait until it was less likely to finish battering her to death.

When the stars finally stopped blinking across her vision, she noticed that the little platform she’d chosen to rest on looked out over a few other segments of the Crossroads.

Those segments seemed to be burning up in a perpetual inferno.

_…Huh_ , she thought.

Solas really hadn’t been kidding with his whole ‘you don’t want to know what I’m up to’ song and dance, had he?

She watched the fires burn for a while as she rested.

There was no smoke.

Somehow, that was especially unsettling.

By the time she felt ready to move again, it had occurred to her that the eerie, smokeless fires were probably consuming the actual, working Eluvians in the area. That was the only reason she could really see for Solas, or anyone opposing him, to want to light part of the place on fire; to keep it from being used.

Unless parts of the place just sort of… naturally caught fire, sometimes.

Hard to say, really.

She followed a few more paths, and was fairly certain that time passed; if only because she grew increasingly exhausted. No conveniently intact Eluvians presented themselves; and it occurred to her that even if they did, she would have no idea what they might need to be activated.

It was looking like she’d have to use the mark again.

She  _really_  did not want to take another trip through the crystal glass tunnel of pain.

_It’s probably different when you’re walking through it,_  she tried to tell herself, with what few, battered scraps of optimism she could still muster. Still. She figured she would try and sleep before making the attempt, if only because staggering back out into a burning world when she could barely see straight didn’t seem like the wisest course of action.

Eventually, she found an alcove that seemed reasonably sheltered enough to suit her nerves, and managed to get into a position that was slightly left of torturous.

It took a long time for exhaustion to override her sense. When it did, a note of wriggling trepidation followed her into unconsciousness.

She realized what was causing it when, almost straight away, a pair of clawed hands, hard and sharp, reached for her in the Fade. Something vast stretched up beneath her, yawning and hungry.

Only a bolt of reflexive fear had her reeling back in time to narrowly avoid being caught by either grasping force.

“ _Where?”_

She woke in a rush of visceral panic.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

She sat, shaking, for several long moments, as her nerves jangled and her breaths came in shallow bursts.

Shit.

The air began to tremble.

The distant, still-burning infernos began to dim. Dying down like candles being blown out. On the horizon, a light gleamed, silvery and bright. Something opening. Something  _massive_  opening; an Eluvian or maybe even just a portal that looked very like one, parting the way for some very, very large traveller to get through.

In an instant, she made a choice, and twisted another rift open.

Then she stumbled through.


	3. Chapter 3

It was marginally better travelling through the crystal glass shard tunnel of pain on foot, she’d been right about that.

It still wasn’t  _ideal_ , but she managed to stagger through, avoiding the worst to the sharp, scraping points until it opened up again, and spat her out into the middle of a raging wind storm. A flash of blue flame narrowly avoided colliding with her head, and she fell sideways; letting out a cry when the fall to the ground jostled every injury she had.

Shit.

Dammit.

The rift – if it could even still be called a rift – closed behind her. She managed a bleary look around, and realized she was lying in the ruins of what used to be a forest. Ashen trunks and splintered trees. There was snow on the ground. It looked like it was melting and freezing by turns. Spirit spun through the air, caught in one of the storms of magic and lightning, twisting and reaching before they blinked out of sight; and then back into it again. Struggling between the real world and the Fade.

It was painful to watch.

More than just the physical pain she was actually in, anyway.

And the exhaustion.

Shit.

She had as long as she could stay conscious for, she guessed, before he managed to catch her. However much time that was to try and find a way to keep him from getting to her, or, even better, find a way to undo what he’d done.

Not like  _that_  was a tall order or anything.

No point in waiting for the pain to subside, she decided. Getting up was going to hurt, too. Might as well get it done in one go.

She staggered onto her feet.

It was like walking through the Fade. Slightly more steady, she thought, but the magic crackling through the air and the terrain burning all around her, the weather storms and spirits and odd changes in the landscape, made it easier to think that she was there than that she was just in the real world.

For lack of a better alternative, she picked a direction, and started walking again.

She got… well, she wasn’t sure how far, actually, before she stumbled and had to stop. An ignominious ending to her glorious escape attempt, she thought; injuring herself too badly to carry on. She wondered what he’d do to her if he found her like this. Anything from healing her and apologizing for having to lock her up again to eating her soul seemed likely.

Footsteps.

Heavy ones.

They stopped near to her head, and a shadow fell over her. She had to crane back to look and see who had found her; and some part of her was expecting the elves who had broken through the barrier. It was hard to imagine many people surviving in the world as she could see it.

A qunari stared down at her instead.

Tall, clad in battered grey armour. Hornless, with white hair, and livid scars across his face.

She didn’t know him. But it was kind of a relief to see someone normal – relatively – standing there. Though she figured the odds were pretty high that he would kill her, and that wouldn’t really work out for her. Or anyone, in all likelihood.

The qunari nudged her with the edge of a massed sword. Not hard enough to hurt.

She blinked.

He regarded her for another moment, and then slid the sword into a set of straps at his back, and bent down and lifting her up.

It was a painful process, but only because it had to be.

Still. She was surprised as she found herself being carried off in utter silence. To what place or purpose was harder to say, but it was a step up from dying in the dirt. Every step felt like it was rattling through her bones, and the armour the qunari wore was rough and didn’t make for much comfort, but his gait was steady.

He strode through the ruined grove, and down towards a dirt path; hidden between several scarred outcroppings of rock. The kind of place that was hard to find if you didn’t already know to look for it. He had to turn sideways to fit into the passage, and her head narrowly missed bashing into the rocks.

Down they went, then, treading a narrow way that managed to rest below the surging storms of the sky, until she spied stone steps.

Dwarven.

She wasn’t surprised, then, when the qunari carried her through the ruined entrance of an old thaig.

Were they in Seheron, she wondered? Or still near the Frostbacks? How far had she gone in the Crossroads, and did that equal or at least affect where she’d come out again?

“Where are we?” she finally managed to ask.

“Is one place any better than another, now?” the qunari asked her, in return.

From the looks of things… probably not.

There was sharp whistling sound, then. A signal, it seemed. Something flashed in the air, and the entrance behind them closed; a scattered of stones willed into place, blocking the light, and leaving only the flickering of Veilfire in place of it.

Almost better, really. At least the Veilfire seemed consistent.

“Arishok. What did you fi… oh Mythal. Bring her here,” an unfamiliar voice snapped. She turned her head, and saw a blonde woman. Dalish. Tan skin, sharp features, and the hard sort of gaze that spoke of banked tempers and long hardships.

Arishok?

Well. She supposed, when the world was ending and people were dying in droves, promotions were bound to move quickly.

Although… the Arishok  _was_  a hornless qunari, wasn’t he?

She looked at her rescuer with renewed interest as he carried her into what seemed to be an emergency hideout of some kind. They thaig was full of tents and supplies, a cobbled together mixture of gear and scavenged things. The main chamber was pretty big, as it went. Torches – both Veilfire and the more traditional kind – lit up the space, which nevertheless retained an aura of dankness. People watched, curiously, as she was brought towards a cluster of tents and bedrolls, and what seemed to be a kind of makeshift field hospital.

“Where did she come from?” the Dalish woman asked the Arishok.

“I found her lying in the field,” he said. “She walked out of the air.”

Once, that proclamation would have merited some kind of reaction. A pause. Some incredulity. Maybe wariness. But apparently things had changed a lot, because the blonde woman only sighed, and then fixed her with a careful look.

“I am no great healer, but I will do what I can. My name is Velanna, and you are safe here.”

“Do not knock me unconscious,” she asked. “Keep me awake.”

Velanna’s expression twisted into pity.

“We cannot stay awake forever.”

She shook her head.

“You do not want me falling asleep here,” she insisted, and tried to make the warning as clear as possible.

It stuck. Or at least, her urgency did. Velanna  _did_  look at her with a little wariness, then, and began examining her injuries. With brisk efficiency they were cleaned, and the worst ones bandaged; and a spell was applied to her hip. Imperfect, and obviously awkward, but it helped.

The Arishok watched the proceedings at a distance. A few others came and went, and when she was finally able to sit up, they’d been joined by another fair-haired, dark-skinned elf.

This one was a man, marked by tattoos but not vallaslin. When he spoke it was with a distinctive Antivan lilt.

“Any sign from Alistair and our illustrious leader?” he asked.

The Arishok shook his head.

“The drop point was empty,” he said.

“That is three months, now,” the Antivan elf murmured. Then he looked at her, and smiled. “Forgive us. You have had the misfortune of being greeted by two of the most dour faces in the camp. Welcome to the last bastion of free resistance against the Fury of the Maker. I am called Zevran. What might your name be?”

Zevran.

The name niggled the back of her thoughts.

…Oh. Yes, the Crow. The one who travelled with the Hero of Fereldan. Leliana spoke well enough of him, she recalled.

Before she could respond to his welcome, though, Velanna reached out and caught her hand.

The mark was shimmering. Not strongly; the flickers of the Veilfire lighting had almost swallowed up the gleam of it, but apparently not well enough. She was too slow to react, and a moment later, her palm was spread wide and the mark was clearly shown.

There was a moment of profound silence.

“…Oh shit,” Zevran said.

Velanna was the first to react, and she reacted with surprising violence; drawing a knife from her belt and lunging towards her.

She scrambled sideways, out of the furious woman’s path, but even as she did Zevran reached and caught his ally; and the Arishok drew his massive sword again, and blocked her own path of escape, a veritable wall of a man.

“Creature!” Velanna spat.

“Do not be a fool!” Zevran snapped at her. “If that is who is I think it is, you could bring the wrath of the beast directly upon us if you spill her blood!”

The Arishok stared down at her with baleful, narrowed eyes.

Shit.

What did they know? Or  _think_  they knew?

“Don’t be a fool?” Velanna spat. “We’re all dead anyway! You know it, I know it, even the commander knows it. If the commander is even still alive out there!  The Dread Wolf will kill us all. I say we take the chance and wound him first!”

“Oh yes, that is a wonderful idea, let us just roll over and die like dogs! Do you not see the opportunity?” Zevran argued in return, and managed to get himself between the enraged Dalish woman and herself.

“Of course I see it, I just explained it!” Velanna snapped.

“The opportunity to  _live_ ,” Zevran huffed.

Then he turned, and looked towards her. Narrowed his eyes.

“If she is the Bride of the Maker, or beast, or ‘Dread Wolf’ if you prefer, then I imagine he would appreciate having her returned to him relatively intact. He may even appreciate it enough to stop burning down some small corner of the universe, at least long enough for the rest of us to reach old age,” he suggested.

Bride of the Maker?

Oh shit.

So apparently she wasn’t just the  _Herald_  of Andraste anymore.

“It is a green mark,” the Arishok finally interrupted. “I fail to see how it is conclusive evidence of random hearsay.”

He did not, however, move, or re-sheath his blade.

“Fine. We shall ask her,” Zevran decided. Then he turned towards her. “Pardon, again, our poor manners, mistress. But are you by any chance the lady love of the giant monster that has been recently destroying the world?”

She shifted a little awkwardly.

Well when he put it like  _that_  it sounded ridiculous.

“Why do you ask?” she replied. Her voice rasped, and her throat ached from it.

“Oh, no particular reason. It is only that it has been said – and rumoured to have been said by the monster himself – that his bride is an elven woman who bears a mark of her greatness on her palm. A line that gleams like the ripples of the Veil, if we are feeling poetic. The merciful Andraste to his wrathful Maker. Apparently she is of magnificent beauty and unbreakable will, and if any of us care for mercy, we should ask it of her, for the beast that would swallow the world in flames will show us none,” Zevran explained.

Slowly, she lowered her face into her palm.

That fucking asshole.

“Dammit,” she murmured.

“Why would the archdemon fall in love with a woman?” the Arishok demanded.

“You think he would prefer a man?” Zevran replied, lightly, though the joviality seemed a bit… forced.

“I think he would prefer no one.”

“Who  _cares_  what he prefers?!” Velanna demands. “She is in league with the monster!”

“Or she is a woman with magical damage to her hand,” the Arishok countered. “Which makes slightly more sense than a woman who has inexplicably won the favour of a beast which seems set upon destroying the entirety of the world. Why would such a creature favour anyone? And if it did, why would it not favour others as well?”

“Qunari. No grasp of romance,” Zevran said. “When was the last time the world made sense, my old friend?”

At that, the Arishok went silent.

Zevran turned back towards her.

“So? Are you Andraste?” he asked.

She swallowed.

“Apparently, in this retelling of the story, I am,” she admitted, quietly.

Velanna lunged for her again, and this time a spell lashed out, and she narrowly managed to duck the bold of flame that surged perilously close to her face. The tent above her caught fire, and then there was a rush of movement as some other people in the camp noticed; somewhere else, a different mage managed to put the flames out.

She tried to make a run for it, but the Arishok was expecting that, and caught her instead.

When the dust had settled, she’d been more or less marched into what seemed to be the ‘prison’ area of the camp – a section half made up of collapsed stone and half made up of wooden planks, with a bolt on the wall for chains. No one tried to put her in the chains. Not yet, at least.

More people had gathered from the survivors. They were an eclectic group, even by Skyhold’s standards; elves and dwarves, humans and qunari, mages and even a few people in worn Templar armour. Though, given the circumstances, whether or not they were actually Templars seemed more questionable.

“I am thinking we should, perhaps, be more hospitable,” Zevran was saying. Velanna had calmed down enough that she wasn’t trying to outright kill her anymore, at least.

“We need the commander back here,” A human man with a gruff voice, and a worn bow strapped to his back, replied.

“Shall I materialize our missing party from thin air?” the Arishok asked him. “Kadan is not here to be consulted. We must decide this matter ourselves.”

“They could be back at any moment,” the human insisted.

“Warden Commander left Sten in charge,” a dwarf, with the reddest hair she had ever seen in her life, bellowed. He seemed a bit out of sorts. Scars had eaten up half of his face, and he wavered like a drunk; though she supposed that could have been an injury as well. “Hell if I know why. But I ain’t disregardin’ th’commander’s decision.”

_Warden_  Commander…?

Alistair?

Or… no, they had said Alistair was with ‘the commander’. So, someone he would answer to, then.

And who was Sten?

“Of course, of course,” Zevran declared, waving a hand airily. “And we shall all do whatever Sten decides is best. But first we must counsel him on that path, as is our prerogative.”

The Antivan turned back towards her.

He smiled, winningly. He was, she thought, the sort of person who had been very handsome, once.

“It fits, no? Our draconic friends struck at the fortress in the mountains, and now, here the treasure has found its way to us. Just  _think_  of what interesting things she might be willing to tell us. Or what things she might be willing to tell her lover, in return,” the Crow said, with obvious implications.

The Arishok glowered at her for a long moment.

“What can you tell us of the archdemon?” he finally asked, firmly; the voice of a man who expected to be given prompt and efficient answers.

She blinked.

“What archdemon?” she replied, cautiously.

“He refers to the wrathful god destroying the world,” Zevran explained. “The Maker, if you prefer.”

“The Dread Wolf,” Velanna said, firmly.

“That one is the most ridiculous. He does not even look like a wolf,” the Antivan insisted.

“He used to,” she said, softly.

All eyes turned back to her.

She swallowed, and sighed. Flexed her left hand a little. Maybe she could open another rift, as little as she relished the idea. She could try and run. But where to? If these people had the Hero of Fereldan on their side, as well as prominent figures like the Arishok, then the odds that anyone else was fairing any better were quite low. Especially if most of the people she knew were sealed away somewhere, sleeping, as Solas had promised.

They were her best chance of finding something; getting somewhere. Figuring out a way to stop him. To save him.

“He used to be Fen’Harel,” she explained.

Silence.

Slowly, the human with the bow at his back reached to his belt. He produced a tarnished coin, and handed it to Velanna. Who, despite her obvious and lingering rage, accepted it with a curt nod of acknowledgement.

Sucking in a breath, she leaned against the planks of her decidedly shoddy prison.

“He was the Dread Wolf, but not like in the legends. He sealed away the elven gods to stop them from the destroying the world.”

Zevran raised an eyebrow.

“Wanted the job for himself?” he asked, wryly.

“That was thousands of years ago. If he had, he could have done it then,” she replied. “The real culprit is Dumat. The first archdemon. He’s the one who started the Blight, I think. He wants to destroy the world. He’s out of his mind. Fen’Harel was going to wake the gods he’d sealed to try and figure out a way to save the world from Dumat. But then he absorbed Dumat’s soul, and it changed him, and he decided to eat the gods instead and use their power to destroy this world and build a new one.”

Silence.

She sighed.

“He… I have a piece of his power. From before he started the whole… y’know. Absorbing souls thing. And he’s in love with me. It’s a long story.”

Silence, again.

The red-haired dwarf was the first to speak.

“You just told us that load a nug shit, and it  _ain’t_  the ‘long story’?” he asked, wobbling a bit.

“It’s not ‘nug shit’, it’s true,” she said.

“An ancient demon wolf ate an archdemon and became corrupted by its madness. This makes sense,” the Arishok told her.

Everyone turned to look at him a little incredulously.

“Not that I am going to say it sounds so far-fetched, considering all that has happened, but…  _this_  is the part you have no problem with?” Zevran asked him.

“Ancient demons exist. Archdemons exist. The Blight corrupts; the explanation fits,” the Arishok replied. “The connection to this woman is more baffling. Archdemons do not make exceptions. Even abominations rarely do.”

“Gods do,” Velanna interjected. “Gods pick favourites all the time, in all of the old legends. Among each other and among their followers. Even the shemlen Maker picked one in their stories.”

The Arishok grunted.

She let out a heavy breath.

“He was keeping me in Skyhold. It’s a fortress in the mountains. He wanted to finish doing the ‘dirty work’ before he let me see what he was up to. But then a couple of dragons broke through the barrier around it, and I escaped,” she said.

“That is plausible,” the Arishok decided.

“Are they still alive? The dragons?” Zevran asked her.

“I don’t know. I was busy escaping,” she admitted.

There was a commotion just out of her line of sight, then. A shuffling of people, a murmur of voices, and then someone cried out. Urgently. In the blink of an eye, Zevran was gone, and the red-haired dwarf, and Velanna weren’t far behind him. Even the Arishok turned away from her. The only one who kept a fixed gaze on her was the man with the bow.

If she’d wanted to attempt another escape, that would have been the opportune moment.

She stayed put.

In the flurry of activity she heard a familiar voice shouting, though. She blinked, and craned her head a little; she couldn’t see him, but after a moment she placed the owner.

Alistair.

Apparently, he hadn’t made the short list of people she considered important to herself, by Solas’ standards.

Well, fair enough. They’d barely met, though it was still disheartening to realize that he probably hadn’t scooped up every last acquaintance of hers, in that case. How had he reckoned things, she wondered? Did he know her precise feelings on individuals? Or had he simply watched her memories unfold and made his best guess, based on her behavior?

Not an important question at the moment, probably.

“Give us some room!” Alistair was shouting. “We barely got out of the pass.”

“Move,” Velanna snapped back at him, and there was the familiar spark and flare of healing magic.

And then footsteps, rapid and heavy, approached where she was being kept; and she found herself face-to-face with the male elf from the assault on Skyhold.

The man stared at her a moment, obviously surprised.

She clenched a fist and took a step back.

Shit.

Sharp eyes darted over her. They seemed to take in as much about her as they could, before they drifted distinctly towards her left hand, and then up to her own again, and narrowed. Everyone not consumed by whatever commotion was going on near Alistair turned to stare at these proceedings.

“Anaris?” the human with the bow asked of the tall elf.

Anaris?

_That_  Anaris? The Forgotten One who’d once pursued Fen’Harel against his wishes?

She felt a moment of reactionary dislike so intense, it was a force of effort not to punch the man in the face.

He seemed to know it, too; and after a moment, he seemed to decide he was amused.

“I thought perhaps you would be Geldauran’s,” he told her. “But Fen’Harel really went and did it. The prospect beggars belief. It must have been some kind of accident. Little creature like you; probably he felt obliged for some reason. Did you touch something you shouldn’t have? Trip and fall on his cock, perhaps?”

The spark of temper she felt was so shockingly visceral, she didn’t even realize she’d moved until she felt the edge of a blade at her throat; the painful press of a hand gripping her arm, even as she gripped Anaris’ neck, her left palm crackling and flaring ominously. Her right was at her belt; but there was no blade there for her to draw.

“Enough!” the Arishok snapped, like thunder, and one of his large hands gripped her and yanked her backwards. The blade at her throat slipped against her skin, and drew a bead of blood.

“Beast. You have  _no idea_  what she is,” Anaris said to him, spitting disdain.

“She is the only break we’ve gotten against this creature,” the man with the bow interjected.

“Oh! A break indeed!” the Forgotten One exclaimed. “You have in there the first evanuris to be made in an age. In several, as a matter of fact. Some fragile mortal cunt, and Fen’Harel’s gone and marked her as his  _equal._  That’s  _his_  power twisting around in her, while he gallivants across the world, tearing it to shreds.”

“Then she is like you?” the Arishok asked, narrowing his eyes. There was another flash of magic from the far corner of the room, and a moment later, Alistair marched over, expression hard.

“I don’t know what you people think is so important that you’re arguing about it  _now_ , but in case you haven’t noticed, the commander is hanging on by a limb; the mages need to  _concentrate,”_  he snapped.

Anaris ignored him.

“She is  _nothing_  like me!” he declared. “An honour to be bestowed upon only the most worthy, the most favoured, and he drenched this little rat in it. This is an insult. You pithy little creatures are less than slaves, and Fen’Harel,  _of course,_  the fucking trickster wolf, decided it would be hilarious to try and make one of you like us. Take some panting bitch and dress her up like a goddess. And now, now his little joke is the only prospect we have. Elaris is dead and your precious fucking ‘Hero of Fereldan’ will probably join her soon, and we get to set our hopes and dreams of not ending up as the wolf’s dinner on  _this._  A pathetic, frail, wretched mortal who does not even know what to do with the power coursing through her veins.”

Everyone just sort of stopped and listened to Anaris’ rant for a moment.

She really, really hated this guy, she decided.

Really.

“Is that sweet talk how you tried to woo him back in the day?” she asked, low and furious. “I can’t  _imagine_  why he turned you down.”

His eyes snapped back onto her.

“Any other day, wretch, and I’d kill you just for the insult of existing,” he informed her.

“Same,” she replied.

“What is going on?” Alistair demanded, impatient and confused. He stared at her.

She almost forgot that he had no recollection of her  _at all_ , for a moment. But then she remembered, and let out a breath. The man with the bow explained the situation to him, more or less. The basic version of it, anyway.

Anaris glared at her.

She glared back at him.

After a breath, the Forgotten One sheathed his blade.

“Let me handle this,” he said, abruptly.

“No,” the Arishok replied.

“Gonna go with Sten on that one. You just went on another rant about us all being vermin and whatnot; not the best way to win favours,” Alistair agreed.

But the Forgotten One looked at neither of them.

“He slew Elaris while we were escaping, and swallowed her soul. I am the  _last one_. I am the last free being left in all the world who knows any possible means of countering him; has any hope of stealing away power from him. You are in no position to deny me anything that might help,” Anaris declared.

Alistair shifted.

“Yeah, but the thing is, I’m not really eager to just replace the one rampaging monster god with another,” he said.

Slowly, Anaris’ gaze drifted to the far corner of the room.

“I could save the commander,” he said. “I am weak from transforming, now. But let me do what I must, and my energy will be restored.”

Alistair froze.

So did everyone else she could see, for that matter.

Anaris tilted his head.

“That is a  _lot_  of blood that’s been lost,” he said, quietly.

“What would you do?” the Arishok asked him.

The Forgotten One looked back towards her.

“Your little gambit with the Calling Cure and the magisters paid off, Alistair. We have disrupted his equilibrium. But he will regain it, in some fashion or another.  _She_  has his power in her. Tainted and corrupted somehow by her own nature, but it’s still tied to him. It cannot be separated from her. But if I do as he has been doing, and take her soul, then I will have it. That power.  _His_  power. It is a tether to him, and with it I can siphon off the souls he has absorbed, and bring him to his knees.”

Wait.

What?

“The anchor can draw the souls away from him?” she asked, sharply. “How?”

Anaris sneered.

“Not in any way  _you_  could manage,” he assured her.

Her gaze turned to the mark on her palm, though, and she found she couldn’t even muster up the appropriate fear for his suggestion at the moment; or even disdain for his attitude.

“What did you do to him?” she asked, quietly, and flexed her fingers.

_It is a tether to him._

“Sang the wrong song in the right place a few times,” Anaris told her, with a shrug. “He forgot up from down until we break the barrier on your little sanctuary. I saw the thrones. How  _quaint_. I would have destroyed them myself, but then he decided to make an abrupt reappearance.”

If he thought the prospect of seeing the creepy thrones destroyed was going to upset her, he was doomed to disappointment.

Alistair stared at them a moment longer, and then turned on his heel.

“What are you doing?” the Arishok asked him.

“I can’t decide this. I’m going to go ask the commander,” Alistair declared.

Anaris rolled his eyes dramatically.

“Of course, let’s ask the delirious, half-dead lump of  _butchered meat_  to make yet another critical decision! What  _else_  are you going to do? The instant she falls asleep, he will find her. The instant he finds her, he will come here, kill everyone, and reclaim her. If we kick her out into the wastes, she’ll either die or go back to him. Your commander’s  _dog_  would be better suited to dealing with the powers she has been bestowed; we do it my way or we die. Just as it has been since this all began,” the Forgotten One snarled.

_“Your_  way?” Alistair snapped back him. “Who saved you, and Elaris? Who woke you before the archdemon could reach you, and got you to safety while you were stumbling around all incoherent and useless? Don’t you  _dare_  call the damn Hero of Fereldan a ‘lump of butchered meat’, you, just, you fucking ass!”

The two men stared one another down, while the Arishok looked at her.

“Create one monster to battle another, and we will leave ourselves battling whichever is left,” he declared. “But that beast may be weakened from its fight.”

Anaris finally looked away from Alistair, and rolled his eyes again.

“I will not kill you people, pathetic as you are,” he said. “You have served me as well as your limited capabilities and perceptions might allow you to, and I will not forget it. But truly, what  _else_  are we going to attempt here?”

Silence.

“Tell me how to get the souls away from him,” she said.

Anaris laughed at her.

“Oh, certainly. Let’s just take five hundred years that none of us in any way have to prepare you and try and get you to inch your way up to something actually approaching the levels of a higher being. The lowest slave in Arlathan would still be leagues ahead of you in ever achieving something like that,” he said. “And even if not, the instant you took even  _one_  soul from him, they would completely override you. Your fate would be the same, whether it was with me or with another; and  _I_ , unlike any of the others, will be merciful to these people.”

“I don’t like this,” Alistair muttered.

“There is nothing to like in any of this,” the Arishok declared. His gaze turned towards Anaris.

After a moment, he nodded.

“As I have been left in command of the camp, and as the Warden Commander is unable to resume leadership, this is my decision to make. It is a terrible decision. Do it,” he declared.

Anaris moved.

She did, too, a jolt of fear sliding down her spine as she reached to open a rift again.

The air rippled, and the tear that opened was neither like the Crossroads nor a normal rift to the Fade. It rippled and wavered, green and shining, and without the normal disruption and pull she would expect of such a thing. It was almost like using Sandal’s rune, instead; like the Fade was too close and the Veil was just a flimsy curtain, and trying to duck behind it would be like hiding behind gauze.

She didn’t get that far, anyway.

Anaris drew his blade and gripped her by the arm, and slashed for her throat; she tried to block him with her other arm, and the blow cut between the joints of her armour and awkwardly sliced at her. A messy cut. He clutched her and his eyes gleamed, faintly, and she felt it, then.

The tug.

The yawning hunger of something ripping at her, as if trying to drain her soul along with the blood pouring from her neck.

_No, no, no._

She clamped a hand down over her wound, and pulled back.

The mark flared again.

Pull, push, fight. It felt like there were a dozen hooks under her skin, and Anaris’ brow furrowed, angry and a little baffled, too. His eyes flashed again, and little more firmly, and she jolted forward and felt a trill of fear. Panic. It rushed through her and the anchor flared more fully, and she felt something else; something warm and buried deep, some tether so quiet and constant that she hadn’t even realized it was there.

Her panic carried along it.

The air shook.

Anaris snarled and all of her insides lurched, cold for a moment, and she wrenched back and let go of her bleeding throat to snatch the blade from his hand. It was a strange moment. She felt half in herself and half out of herself, dangling as though she was at the edge of a cliff; and her limbs moved as the trembling in the air increased, like the sound of a furious, monstrous roar.

She twisted her wrist and in one smooth motion, sank the blade through the cloth segment of Anaris’ armour; up and into his flesh.

He gaped at her.

The last of the gods not yet enslaved.

The only one who left who knew how to save Solas.

Save the world.

She reached for him with the fingers dangling beyond herself, and gripped at him, and  _pulled_.

It was like trying to yank a dragon down by the horns.

His body slumped, and people moved, but the air was shaking and they were afraid.  _He_  was coming for her, and they knew it. Curses and cries of alarm. Anaris was silver light, strands flailing at her, and she was green. Just green. Emerald and unyielding, and she held him with a determination that he couldn’t match. Could never have matched.

Hundreds of years to prepare could make things more complicated than they ever really were, she thought.

She dragged him to her, and broke him into pieces as she did; and each piece burned as she took it in, fighting, cursing, wailing. It was a cruelty. It broke her apart to do it in places, too; it burned, and shattered, and threaded silver through the green, and she thought she was so strong. The strongest. Destined for the most greatness. To be worshipped; to be revered, and never denied. No, no one could deny him. He was strength personified. He was  _victory_ , and he would prevail.

She would prevail.

She, not him.

She would take his victory, and his knowledge, and everything else of his; as he had tried to take from her.

He was old and powerful and petty.

She was young and determined and unyielding.

Anaris’ body hit the ground, slumping off of the blade.

She inhaled, and blinked, and focused past the screaming that was still ringing in the back of her head. Her wound had stopped bleeding. Her injuries felt like they were gone. She let out a slow breath, and met the shocked eyes of those who were watching her; who were not yet attempting to flee the coming storm.

“You should all stay here,” she said.

A wave of her hand kept them from moving as she stepped around the laughable planks they’d tried to cage her with. She strode past the injured body, still bleeding out beneath the stilled hands of the healer tending to the fallen warden commander.

A blink, and the worst wounds closed themselves; and the injuries began to heal.

She strode out of the thaig; opened the way and then closed it, neatly, behind her. The air was trembling. The ground was shaking, sending all the little pebbles and bits of debris dancing around her as she walked.

A massive shadow passed overhead.

An equally massive set of jaws lunged for her, and she darted aside, staring into black,  _black_  eyes, near senseless in the face of a many-winged dragon.

The beast was phenomenal.

The biggest she had ever seen, white and covered in scales and spikes, his wings shifting and twisting; leathery and feathered alike. A half a dozen horns crested away from the back of his massive skull, and six eyes spread across the expanse of it. Sharp teeth and black talons, and pulsing, dark veins beneath the rigid armour of his scales. The air around him was a storm as he swept towards her, and she felt it, somewhat; felt his burning desire to have her, confused and jumbled by all his conflicted impulses.

She held on to that thread. That thread – how had she ever missed it before?

“Hello, emma lath,” she whispered.

He roared.

Her love, her love was in there, all covered in reaching hands that were not her own; unwelcome intruders, and the worst of all, the black dragon coiled around his feet. She dropped her useless blade, and narrowed her eyes, focused on what was important.

They danced.

He tried to pull Anaris from her; tried to pull her in, too, but she could cold her feet, now. She knew how to stand, and pull back.

She was always a surprise.

Snapping jaws and magic, spells attempting to drag her in, drag her down; even burn her away. But the threads of him were all still disjointed. Pulling him in too many directions at once. She snipped them away; little silver souls, threaded down the tether between them. Fighting in the din of both their minds, but her purpose was clear.

Clearest of all.

And then the black dragon seized hold, and caught her.

Dark talons clamped down over her and pinned her in place. Jaws opened wide, teeth glittering; breath like icy winter winds.

Arrows struck at the side of his skull.

They pinged off, more or less harmless, but then spells were flung with only slightly more success. The survivors had poured from their safe warren, and joined the fight; not enough, blades and spells would never be enough, but it distracted him, for a moment.

She set her hands against his jaws, and grasped at the black blood of his veins, let the anchor surge through air and flesh and Fade, and  _tore._

Dark ichor spilled over her fingers.

She swallowed it, and drank the shadows from him.

_Come here, you bastard,_  she thought, and in the Fade, she grasped at the binding chains she could just faintly see around them.  _Come here, and let me spend eternity shrieking in your ear._

The dragon collapsed, and writhed.

She burned.

She screamed.

It was like everything in her was set aflame. All the voices, all the souls, all the memories, and everything was so much  _bigger_  than her, everything stretched so far beyond her comprehension, but she could see  _him_ , bound in the center of it all, and that was simple.

That was simple.

There was no getting caught in the storm when she accepted that she couldn’t understand it. There was no getting caught in the sound when she refused to listen. The darkness whirled and fought and shrank into her, stretched beyond her, and she gripped it by the chains, and held tight. Time passed and didn’t pass.

The world was vast.

But he could be small again; he could be simple.

She swept it away from him. The storm of it shook him from the bones of the dragon, and he collapsed, gasping, as she made herself a prison for his enemies. As she stretched them out into the space beyond herself, and threaded the tethers to her own heart, and opened black eyes to see as she had never seen anything before.

She could feel the world.

She could feel him.

Feel his anguish.

His form, so small now, shook on the ground before her.

There was so much to see, but she couldn’t have focused on anything else right then even if she’d tried.

He stared at her with his bright, bright eyes, and it made her so happy, for some reason, just to see them. It made her think she had done well. She moved closer; she wanted to see them, see him, closer.

Her steps felt different from usual.

Why was he anguished? What was wrong? Everything inside of him felt like a terrible twisting of emotions. Guilt and sorrow and anger and remorse, love and fear and a terrible desperation. But it was just him. Just him, by himself, as it should be, and that was good. That ought to have pleased him.

She reached for him. Soothe, soothe the hurt, it was going to be alright.  _He_  was going to be alright, because she had saved him and she would protect him, and she would fix everything. Her hand settled, gently as she could manage, against the side of his face.

It looked wrong.

That wasn’t what her hand was supposed to look like, she thought, but it was hard to see what  _exactly_  was off about it. A tear slipped out of the corner of his eye, though, and his pain distracted her again. No, no, no pain. No pain. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t seem to remember how to make the words right then. They were too small and she was too vast.

His hand curled, slowly, over top of her own. An image came to her; vivid and clear, and carried through his waves of misery. What her hand should look like. 

She made it match better.

It didn’t seem to ease the ache in him, though.

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he said. Broken.

Heartbroken. Yes, that was what that feeling in him was. His heart was breaking. Or had already broken. All sharp shards on his soft insides.

Poor love.

So many mistakes. So much pain. Not fair, not for him.

She would fix it.

She would fix all of his mistakes. She would make the world better, until it didn’t hurt him anymore.

And in the meantime, he could rest. He could sleep.

Beloved, dreaming wolf. Her wolf. Hers.

She nudged his mind and sent him sleeping away, tucked inside of himself; not even in the Fade. Deep, safe sleep, where time wouldn’t touch him. He reached for her before he succumbed. Called out,  _no,_  but it was for the best. She caught him as he fell, as he slid towards sleep, fighting the tide with all he had, and caressed his face again.

Soft.

He did not want to sleep, but it was for the best.

“Ir…” she managed, her voice low and dissonant, and filled with noises she thought maybe weren’t supposed to be in it. “Ir abelas.”

Another spark of anguish, and then the blessed relief of darkness swallowed his pain.

She nuzzled against him, and inhaled, deeply. Familiar, his scent. Clear.

Then she stood up, wings cracking at her back. The distant, tiny others moved back; frightened, fleeing. She cast her eyes towards them, and then on to the ravaged sky. The burning earth.

There was work to be done.


End file.
